Blog - Catholic Family Newshttps://www.catholicfamilynews.org/blog/Sat, 19 Jan 2019 19:01:30 +0000en-USSite-Server v6.0.0-16734-16734 (http://www.squarespace.com)First Reaction to Suppression of Ecclesia Dei Commission from the SSPXCFN BlogBrian McCallSat, 19 Jan 2019 19:18:51 +0000https://www.catholicfamilynews.org/blog/2019/1/19/first-reaction-to-suppression-of-ecclesia-dei-commission-from-the-sspx59f88a70bce176951da623c1:59f88b47ec212d7d776a7d73:5c43740a88251ba07956483cAs reported earlier today (here) Pope Francis has suppressed the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei. The first Traditionalist organization to react officially to this official action of the Pope comes from the Society of St. Pius X. This is fitting since the Commission was originally founded in reaction to the episcopal consecration of four bishops by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre and Bishop Antônio de Castro Mayer, as noted in this statement. (Interestingly the participation of Bishop de Castro Mayer always seems to be ignored even in today’s reporting. The first version of Ecclesia Dei Afflicta forgot to mention him as well and after he contacted the Vatican to make sure they understood he was a co-consecrator they reissued the document a few days later including him the alleged claim of excommunication.) The SSPX statement provides helpful historical context to assist in understanding the Pope’s actions. The statement also reaffirms the position of the SSPX that difficulties between the SSPX and the Roman authorities are primarily doctrinal. The liturgical problems that cause the priests of the SSPX (and affiliated religious communities) to offer the Traditional Latin Mass exclusively are inextricably connected to doctrinal novelties introduced by Vatican II.

We will continue to post official reactions of other traditionalist organizations and a detailed commentary by some CFN authors as this story develops.

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On January 17, 2019, Pope Francis suppressed the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei, which had been created in 1988 by his predecessor Pope John Paul II.

The Apostolic Letter in the form of the Pope’s motu proprio was published at noon on January 19 by the Holy See Press Office and inserted in L’Osservatore Romano. From now on, the Commission’s responsibilities will be placed entirely in the hands of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which will designate a special section to take over its activities. This transfer, explains the Sovereign Pontiff, comes in response to a need expressed during a meeting of this dicastery on November 15, 2017, approved by him on November 24, and validated in a plenary session in January 2018.

The pope recalls how, over thirty years ago, the day after the episcopal consecrations in 1988, John Paul II wished to facilitate the “full ecclesial communion of priests, seminarians, religious communities or individuals until now linked in various ways to the Fraternity founded by Archbishop Lefebvre”. The goal was to help them “remain united to the Successor of Peter in the Catholic Church while preserving their own spiritual and liturgical traditions”. This preservation of the spiritual and liturgical traditions was ensured in 2007 by Pope Benedict XVI’s motu proprio Summorum Pontificum.

This historical reminder of Pope Francis has the merit of showing how this Pontifical Commission was originally founded on the condemnation of Archbishop Lefebvre and his work. In its thirty years of existence, it mostly limited itself to liturgical questions, with the intention of responding to the “sensitivity” of conservative priests and faithful, and of countering the Society of St. Pius X’s growth throughout the world…

But after the supposed excommunications of the bishops of Tradition were lifted in 2009, Benedict XVI believed that the ongoing doctrinal issues were a good reason to attach the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The goal was to begin doctrinal discussions with the Society of St. Pius X.

The Primacy of the Doctrine of the Faith

Today, Pope Francis writes that the religious communities that belong to the Pontifical Commission have acquired stability both in their numbers and their activities; they ensure the celebration of the Mass in its “extraordinary form”. But, he points out, “the questions dealt with by the same Pontifical Commission were of a primarily doctrinal nature.” These objections and questions are clearly irrelevant to these communities. It is indeed with the Society of St. Pius X that they continue to be an issue.

This is what the cardinals pointed out on November 15, 2017, when they “formulated the request that dialogue between the Holy See and the Priestly Fraternity of St. Pius X be conducted directly by the aforementioned Congregation [for the Doctrine of the Faith], as the questions being dealt with are of a doctrinal nature.”

One conclusion is evident: as the so-called Ecclesia Dei communities have preserved “their spiritual and liturgical traditions”, they clearly do not count in this discussion. If they remain attached to a section of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, it is incidental. They can have the Mass, the “spiritual and liturgical traditions”, but not the whole doctrine that goes along with them.

That has always been the Society of St. Pius X’s great reproach against Dom Gérard [founder of the Benedictine monastery at Le Barroux who worked with Archbishop Lefebvre until 1988] and all those who thought they should break the unity of Tradition in order to negotiate a purely practical agreement. The crisis of the Church cannot be reduced to a spiritual or liturgical question alone. It is deeper, for it touches the very heart of the Faith and the doctrine of Revelation, Christ the King’s right to reign here below over men and over societies.

]]>First Reaction to Suppression of Ecclesia Dei Commission from the SSPXAfter Over Thirty Years Pope Francis Supresses the Ecclesia Dei CommissionCFN BlogBrian McCallSat, 19 Jan 2019 19:00:53 +0000https://www.catholicfamilynews.org/blog/2019/1/19/after-over-thirty-years-pope-francis-supresses-the-ecclesia-dei-commission59f88a70bce176951da623c1:59f88b47ec212d7d776a7d73:5c436ff04fa51abcc09a27c9As has been predicted for some time (see our December 28, 2018 report here) the Vatican announced today that Pope Francis has suppressed the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei, that was established by John Paul II in 1988. Below is an English translation of the Italian text of the Motu Proprio dated January 17 but released today. We are grateful to Lifesite News Rome correspondent Diane Montagna who prepared this working translation so quickly. You can read the full story as reported on Lifesite News here.

Later today and over the next few days we will be posting reactions from interested organizations and some commentary by CFN authors to help our readers consider the implications of this latest action by Pope Francis

Apostolic Letter

issued Motu Proprio

on the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei

For over thirty years the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei, established with the Motu proprio Ecclesia Dei adflictaof 2 July 1988, has carried out with sincere solicitude and praiseworthy concern the task of collaborating with Bishops and the Dicasteries of the Roman Curia, in facilitating the full ecclesial communion of priests, seminarians, communities or individual men and women religious, linked to the Fraternity founded by Bishop Marcel Lefebvre, who wished to remain united to the Successor of Peter in the Catholic Church, preserving their own spiritual and liturgical traditions.[1]

In this way, it was able to exercise its authority and competence in the name of the Holy See over these societies and associations, until otherwise provided.[2]Subsequently, by virtue of the Motu proprio Summorum Pontificumof 7 July 2007, the Pontifical Commission extended the authority of the Holy See to those Institutes and Religious Communities which had adhered to the extraordinary form of the Roman Rite and had assumed the precedent traditions of religious life, supervising the observance and application of the provisions established.[3]

Two years later, my Venerable Predecessor Benedict XVI, with the Motu Proprio Ecclesiae unitatem, of 2 July 2009, reorganized the structure of the Pontifical Commission, in order to make it more suited to the new situation created by the remission of the excommunication of the four Bishops consecrated without pontifical mandate. And, furthermore, considering that after this act of grace, the questions dealt with by the same Pontifical Commission were of a primarily doctrinal nature, he more organically linked it to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, while maintaining its initial aims, but modifying its structure.[4]

Now, since the Feria IV of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on 15 November 2017 formulated the request that dialogue between the Holy See and the Priestly Fraternity of St. Pius X be conducted directly by the aforementioned Congregation, as the questions being dealt with are of a doctrinal nature, to which I gave my approval in an audience with the Prefect on 24 November 2017, and this proposal was accepted by the Plenary Session of the same Congregation celebrated from 23-26 January 2018, I have arrived, after ample reflection, at the following decision.

Considering that today the conditions which led the Holy Pontiff John Paul II to institute the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei have changed; noting that the Institutes and Religious Communities which habitually celebrate in the extraordinary form have today found their own stability of number and of life; recognizing that the aims and questions dealt with by the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei are of a predominantly doctrinal order; and wishing that these aims be made ever more evident to the conscience of the ecclesial communities, with this Apostolic Letter ‘Motu proprio data’,

I decree that

1. The Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei, instituted on 2 July 1988 with the Motu Proprio Ecclesia Dei adflicta, is suppressed.

2. The tasks of the Commission in question are entirely assigned to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, within which a special Section will be established that is committed to continue the work of vigilance, promotion and protection conducted thus far by the suppressed Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei.

3. The budget of the Pontifical Commission returns to being part of the ordinary accounting of aforementioned Congregation.

I also establish that this Motu proprio, to be observed notwithstanding anything to the contrary, even should it merit particular mention, be promulgated by publication in L’Osservatore Romanoin its 19 January 2019 edition, coming into immediate force, and that subsequently it be inserted into the official Commentary of the Holy See, theActa Apostolicae Sedis.

Given in Rome, at Saint Peter’s, on 17 January 2019, Sixth Year of Our Pontificate.

]]>After Over Thirty Years Pope Francis Supresses the Ecclesia Dei CommissionThe Unraveling of Wuerl's LiesCFN BlogGeorge NeumayrFri, 18 Jan 2019 22:46:47 +0000https://www.catholicfamilynews.org/blog/2019/1/18/the-unraveling-of-wuerls-lies59f88a70bce176951da623c1:59f88b47ec212d7d776a7d73:5c4235297924e84ce14a60b6Editor’s Note: Since the release of the Pennsylvania Grand Jury Report and Archbishop Viganò's explosive testimony last August, arguably no other journalist has been as tenacious and courageous in holding Cardinal Donald Wuerl accountable than George Neumayr, author of The Political Pope. Neumayr, a faithful Catholic and contributing editor to The American Spectator, has spent the last several months investigating the cover-up of disgraced ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick’s evil deeds and the role that Wuerl has played in shielding McCarrick, his predecessor in the archdiocese of Washington, D.C., from scrutiny and punishment. (See here for Neumayr’s unexpected encounter with Mark Sullivan, former head of Secret Service under President Obama.)

Late last week, news broke that Cardinal Wuerl has known about allegations of misconduct against McCarrick since 2004, despite Wuerl’s duplicitous assurances to the contrary. It seems that Archbishop Viganò has been proven correct when he asserted concerning Wuerl, “The Cardinal lies shamelessly.” CFN is thus honored to reprint Neumayr’s latest article on the Wuerl Saga and commends him for all his valiant efforts while covering this sickening story over the past several months.

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Long before he concealed McCarrick’s misconduct, he had done the same for his mentor.

In the latest revelation about Donald Wuerl — that, contrary to his claims of ignorance, he knew about McCarrick’s misconduct for at least 14 years — he emerges as the amoral but self-protective bureaucrat, undone by his own pass-the-buck-style record-keeping, which gives a grimly ironic dimension to his downfall.

Wuerl’s policy wasn’t one of zero tolerance but of zero legal exposure, and toward that end he needed to keep records of complaints he had received and transmitted to the papal nuncio. One of McCarrick’s victims, Robert Ciolek, had the presence of mind to ask the Diocese of Pittsburgh to see a personnel file related to his settlement, which established his memory of events: that he had told the Pittsburgh diocesan review board about McCarrick’s predation, and that Wuerl, at Ciolek’s request, had spoken with the papal nuncio about the complaint.

Ciolek wasn’t permitted to make a copy of the documents in the file but he caught a glimpse of its most relevant section, which apparently left the Diocese of Pittsburgh with no choice but to admit Wuerl’s knowledge, as much as that must have pained Wuerl’s hand-picked successor in Pittsburgh, Bishop David Zubik. No doubt Wuerl is furious at Zubik for letting Ciolek gaze at those pesky paragraphs. Reported the Washington Post:

Ciolek traveled to Pittsburgh in early December, where he was allowed to see a portion of a file about his case. It was the priest personnel file of the Pittsburgh priest Ciolek says abused him in seminary. Diocesan officials would not allow Ciolek to make copies of or photograph the documents.

However, he said he saw a very brief — perhaps one or two short paragraphs — memo in the file. From his memory, Ciolek said the document was dated right around the time of his Pittsburgh testimony. The words were typed, he said.

“It memorialized Wuerl’s meeting with the papal nuncio earlier that week, and indicated he had shared with the papal nuncio, Archbishop Montalvo, the details involving allegations I had made about McCarrick.” The memo was in the first person, Ciolek said, and included Wuerl’s handwritten initials after his printed name. It said nothing about any response by Montalvo or anything else, Ciolek said.

Caught out in a huge lie, Wuerl is now telling new lies of such pathetic Clintonian straining that they are not even worth engaging. Lying for months, Wuerl knew that he had to head off Ciolek and made sure to have his phalanx of lawyers stonewall him for as long as possible. Ciolek requested a meeting with Wuerl in the hopes of getting him to come clean, but Wuerl wouldn’t grant it without extensive conditions, according to the Post. Until just days ago, Wuerl’s lawyers were still hoping to pacify Ciolek, but Ciolek had grown tired of Wuerl’s duplicity:

Ciolek, who comes from a devout, churchgoing family, said he wanted Wuerl to apologize and own up to what happened, actions he feels could be an important part of Catholic healing.

“My hope was real reform, permanent change, serious steps,” he said. “Wuerl’s honesty and apology would have gone a long way to giving the Catholic community better hope that the church is serious about change.”

Beyond busting Wuerl as a liar, Ciolek’s revelation also confirms Wuerl’s indifference to the threat of McCarrick as a predator. For at least 14 years, Wuerl knew of McCarrick’s predatory habits and didn’t take any steps to protect his priests and seminarians from him. Wuerl related to McCarrick not as a shepherd of souls or a protector of his flock but as a corrupt peer willing to overlook his predation. Just a year or so after hearing Ciolek’s story of harassment at McCarrick’s hands, Wuerl was feting McCarrick and praising his predecessor’s tenure. Wuerl’s diocesan newspaper would consistently give McCarrick glowing coverage and the two would often concelebrate masses together. Just go back and look at all the pictures of the two schmoozing together at this or that gala. All the while Wuerl knew McCarrick had introduced grave corruption into the Church.

Undoubtedly, McCarrick had played a role in choosing Wuerl as his successor, sizing him up as a trustworthy ally. But why? What gave McCarrick that confidence? Did he have dirt on Wuerl? Did McCarrick know the details of Wuerl’s apprenticeship under Cardinal John Wright? Perhaps.

Long before Wuerl concealed McCarrick’s misconduct, he had served as the long-time secretary to Wright, who was also an accused homosexual predator. In The Rite of Sodomy [NB: specifically, Vol. III — Ed.], journalist Randy Engel reports that Wright’s “pederastic predilections were an ‘open secret’” and details a specific accusation of abuse leveled against Wright. Through Wright, Wuerl must have received his first education in cover-ups and the keeping of secrets. If he could cover for Wright, why not McCarrick?

Wuerl’s training under Wright cries out for greater scrutiny, as even members of the Catholic left, such as former Newsweek religion editor Kenneth Woodward, now note. Woodward’s beat used to include reporting on Wright and had heard about his role in turning the Pittsburgh seminary into a “haven” for gay priests. No one was closer to Wright than Wuerl, wrote Woodward in Commonweal:

In 1969, at the age of sixty, Pope Paul VI chose Wright to head the Congregation for Priests in Rome and elevated him to cardinal. It was there, in the frenzied initial years of the post-council era, that I first heard stories of his leading a double life rather openly with a younger lover. What interests me now is not the private details of this double life, but whether it influenced how he ran the congregation overseeing the selection, training, and formation of the clergy. Donald Wuerl, who recently resigned as archbishop of Washington D.C., would surely know the truth about Wright. Wuerl’s first assignment after ordination at the age of thirty-one was as secretary to then Bishop Wright of Pittsburgh in 1966. The younger priest was said to be closer to the cardinal than the hair on his head. He became Wright’s omnipresent full-time personal assistant when the latter moved to Rome, even sitting in for him during the papal conclave that elected John Paul II.

Were the Vatican serious about uprooting the culture that made the McCarrick scandal possible, it would press Wuerl to come clean about Wright and the role that Wright played in forming a Gay Mafia in the Church. But of course that won’t happen under this pope, whose own knowledge of McCarrick’s misdeeds has come to light and whose papal election was a byproduct of that homosexual network’s pervasive influence.

Far from punishing Wuerl, Pope Francis has been at pains to protect him and thank him for his “nobility.” Wuerl remains the head of the archdiocese of Washington, D.C, as an “apostolic administrator,” but may soon depart from that position. Yet it appears that Pope Francis will add insult to injury by letting him in effect choose his successor.

The image of the Church this leaves is one of a hopelessly corrupt bureaucracy in which bishops hide behind the most minimalist pro forma actions while keeping known predators in circulation and then lying about it. Even if one were to take Wuerl’s latest statement seriously, he is conceding at the very least that he knew McCarrick had been accused of corrupting a priest. In a church where holiness is the first, not the last, consideration, a responsible bishop would have followed up on the matter and been greatly troubled by it. For Wuerl, Ciolek’s complaint was simply a matter of box-checking.

Wuerl continues to insist, in spite of his obvious lying about his level of knowledge concerning McCarrick for over a half a year, that he “acted appropriately,” which is the language not of a pastor but of a nabbed corporate CEO. Wuerl’s career ends as it began under Cardinal Wright — as a reptilian climber and cold operator for whom duping the faithful became second nature.

]]>The Unraveling of Wuerl's LiesPope Francis, Indifferentism, and IslamizationCFN BlogProfessor William KilpatrickWed, 09 Jan 2019 23:29:38 +0000https://www.catholicfamilynews.org/blog/2019/1/9/pope-francis-indifferentism-and-islamization59f88a70bce176951da623c1:59f88b47ec212d7d776a7d73:5c367653562fa7eeb94d0f55Editor’s Note: In light of Pope Francis’ upcoming trip to Morocco (Mar. 30-31, 2019), the official logo of which was recently released by the Vatican (shown above — see here for an interesting take on the logo), the following article by Professor William Kilpatrick is a timely reminder that Francis’ position on Islam (rooted in Vatican II) is both false and extremely dangerous. It amounts to nothing less than “An Absurd Whitewash of Islam,” as declared by John Vennari (R.I.P.), Michael Matt, and Christopher Ferrara in Part II of their three-part joint statement, With Burning Concern: We Accuse Pope Francis, published in 2016. As the international stakes continue to rise, CFN stands with Prof. Kilpatrick and supports his ongoing efforts to speak the unpleasant truth about Islam.

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Two young Scandinavian women who were hiking in the Atlas Mountains in Morocco were found dead in mid-December in their tent. The ISIS terrorists later posted a video of themselves decapitating one of the victims.

The mother of one of the women told reporters, “Her priority was safety. The girls had taken all precautionary measures before embarking on this trip.”

“Except,” as Robert Spencer commented in JihadWatch, “that it no doubt didn’t even occur to them that what they thought they knew about Morocco’s religion and culture might be inaccurate and designed to whitewash Islam, leaving them ill-informed about a threat that they actually did end up facing.”

If one depended on the European media and European schools for one’s knowledge of Islam, one would indeed come away with a misleading picture of Islam. But the same could be said of Catholics who rely on Church pronouncements about Islam. Ever since the Second Vatican Council, Church leaders have presented a smiley-faced version of Islam which emphasizes the commonalities with Catholicism and leaves out the alarming elements.

Over the last six years, the chief proponent of this bowdlerized view of Islam has been Pope Francis. He has reassured Christians that Islam is opposed to violence, advised Muslim migrants to find comfort in the Koran, and has portrayed terrorists as betrayers of true Islam.

More significantly, he has become perhaps the world’s foremost spokesman for an open-borders, let-everyone-in policy toward immigration. Seemingly indifferent to the increasingly dangerous situation created by jihad-minded Muslims in Europe, Francis has encouraged a welcoming attitude toward all while scolding opponents of mass migration as fearful and xenophobic.

In short, Pope Francis has acted as an advocate for Islam. He has portrayed it as a religion of peace, the moral equivalent of Catholicism, and a force for good. A number of people, however, now feel that the pope has seriously misled Christians about the nature and goals of Islam and Islamic immigration. Like the teachers and other cultural elites who left the two Scandinavian women “ill-informed about a threat that they actually did end up facing,” Pope Francis, by whitewashing Islam, has left millions of Christians unprepared for the escalating threat that is now facing them.

The analogy between the misinformed Scandinavian friends and misinformed Europeans breaks down in one respect: No one forced the young women to travel to Morocco. They went there of their own accord. It’s one thing to invite yourself into the high mountains of Morocco and take your chances, but it’s quite another thing altogether to invite Morocco into Europe and let ordinary Europeans bear the consequences. This is what the European elites—with much encouragement from Francis—have done.

The combination of high Muslim birth rates, mass Muslim migration, and European concessions to Islam’s blasphemy laws has set Europe on a course toward Islamization. Islamization, in turn, will spell dhimmitude for Christians. As the Islamic influence grows, Christians will be subject to increasing restrictions on the practice of their faith, perhaps even to the point of persecution. It’s possible that Christianity in Europe will be exterminated.

Is Francis Naïve About Islam?

The pope has done much to promote the cause of Islam—so much so that he has been praised by Islamic leaders for his defense of their faith. The questions that then arise are these: Is Francis aware of the possibility that Islam will become dominant in Europe? Is he aware that this may spell the end of European Christianity? And if he is aware, does he care?

For a long time, I thought that Francis was simply naïve regarding Islam. His counterfactual statements about Islam and his Pollyannaish view of mass Muslim migration must, I thought, be the result either of blissful ignorance or of bad advice from “experts,” or a combination of both.

Now, however, I have my doubts. The catalyst for these doubts is Francis’s approach to the current sex-abuse crisis. I originally supposed that he was naïve about this, too: perhaps he didn’t realize the full extent of the problem or the full extent of the cover-ups, or perhaps he wasn’t aware of the numerous lavender networks in seminaries, in dioceses, and in the Vatican itself. But in light of recent revelations, it no longer seems possible to give him the benefit of the doubt. In several cases, he not only knew of the crimes and cover-ups, but he took steps to protect and/or promote those involved. Francis seems determined to push through a revolution in doctrine and morals—what he calls “a radical paradigm shift”—and it doesn’t seem to matter that the men he has chosen to help him achieve his goals are the ones most deeply implicated in the scandals. By all accounts, Pope Francis is a “hands-on” pope who knows exactly what he wants, carefully calculates his moves, and leaves little to chance.

Why, then, should we suppose Francis is completely naïve about the extent of the threat from Islam and from Islamic immigration? It’s difficult to imagine that he isn’t fully aware of the widespread persecution of Christians in Muslim lands. And it’s just as difficult to think that he’s ignorant of the Islamic crime wave on his own doorstep—the escalating incidence of rape, riots, and terrorist attacks in Europe. Does he really believe that such things have nothing to do with Islam?

Unless one assumes that Francis is ignorant of history and out of touch with current events, one must entertain the possibility that—to repeat a favorite slogan of his—he wants to “make a mess” in Europe.

But why? Why risk the damage to the Church that would surely follow on the Islamization of Europe? Doesn’t Francis care about the Church? Increasingly, it seems that he does not. This is to say that he doesn’t have much use for the “old” Church—the one that was handed down by the Apostles, and which has now become too narrow and tradition-bound to suit his liberal tastes.

The Fluid Church of the Future

What he does care about is the new Church of the future—a Church of openness, inclusiveness, and fluidity. Led by the Spirit and free of bothersome dogma, this liberated Church would be able to adjust to the changing needs of the times. If one reads between the lines, this is what Francis and those around him seem to desire.

Indeed, one needn’t bother to read between the lines. In the words of Fr. Thomas Rosica, a media advisor to the Vatican: “Pope Francis breaks Catholic traditions whenever he wants because he is free of disordered attachments.” Moreover, “Our Church has indeed entered a new phase. With the advent of this first Jesuit pope, it is openly ruled by an individual rather than by the authority of Scripture alone or even its own dictates of tradition plus Scripture.”

The observation that many churches, which until a few years ago were necessary, are now no longer thus, due to a lack of faithful and clergy … should be welcomed in the Church not with anxiety, but as a sign of the times that invites us to reflection and requires us to adapt.

Translation: Francis is not particularly concerned about church closings. Perhaps he even thinks of them as a blessing, i.e., a necessary end to the old order of things that will clear the way for the construction of the new order.

What is this new order? In many respects, it resembles the new world order envisioned by politicians and academics on the left. Like them, Francis has a dim view of national borders and national sovereignty, and, like them, he has an almost unquestioning belief in the benefits of international institutions. One gets the impression that Francis would be quite content to let the U.N. run the world, despite the fact that the U.N. is increasingly run by leftists and Islamists. For example, Francis has praised the U.N.’s Global Compact for Migration because he believes that immigration should be governed globally rather than by individual nations.

How does this relate to Christianity and Islam? Just as Francis seems to favor a one-world government, he also seems to be drawn by the vision of a one-world religion. He hasn’t said so in so many words, but he has given several indications that he envisions an eventual blending of religions. This would not be the “one flock, one shepherd” Church that Christ spoke of but something a bit more diverse.

One way to achieve this unity in diversity is by de-emphasizing doctrine. Doctrinal differences are, after all, the main dividing line between different faiths. Thus, by downplaying the importance of doctrine—something he has done fairly consistently throughout his papacy—it’s probable that Francis hopes to smooth the path to interreligious harmony. Just as Francis disapproves of borders between nations, it’s quite likely that he looks upon borders between religions as artificial and unnecessarily divisive.

Indifferentism

This is speculation, of course, but it’s not sheer speculation. As George Neumayr points out in The Political Pope, Francis frequently shows signs of indifferentism—i.e., the belief that all religions are of equal value. For example, when speaking of the murder of Fr. Jacques Hamel by two jihadists, he drew a moral equivalence between Islam and Christianity, saying, “If I speak of Islamic violence, I must speak of Catholic violence.”

Other signs of his indifferentism are not difficult to find. In 2014, he told a group of Protestants, “I’m not interested in converting Evangelicals to Catholicism. I want people to find Jesus in their own community.” On another occasion, he criticized Pope Benedict’s “ordinariate” for Anglicans interested in becoming Catholics by saying that they should remain “as Anglicans.” On still other occasions, he has waxed enthusiastic about Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation.

Ironically, several examples of his indifferentism can be found in Evangelii Gaudium—ostensibly an exhortation to evangelize. Although the document urges us to spread the joy of the Gospel, it provides a number of reasons why we shouldn’t bother. The main reason given is that we already share so many ethical and spiritual values with other faiths that there’s no point in converting non-Catholics.

Thus, Evangelii Gaudium leaves the impression that Jews shouldn’t be evangelized (an impression that was later explicitly confirmed by the Vatican). Moreover, Francis also seems to exempt Muslims from any need to convert. As I wrote previously in Crisis:

After reading Evangelii Gaudium’s positive assessment of Islam, one could be forgiven for concluding that the conversion of Muslims is not an urgent matter. And, indeed, there is no suggestion in the document that Muslims should be evangelized. At the most, Christians should dialogue with Muslims about their “shared beliefs.”

Rather than converting others, Francis seems more interested in learning from them. In Evangelii Gaudium and in numerous talks, he frequently extols the “richness” and “wisdom” of other cultures. Whereas Christ commanded his apostles to “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations…,” Francis’s message is more along the lines of: “Go therefore and learn the wisdom of other cultures.” Francis’s attitude toward evangelization can perhaps be summed up in something he said to atheist journalist Eugenio Scalfari: “Proselytism is solemn nonsense.”

If this is the case, then Pope Francis probably has no desire to convert the Muslims streaming into Europe. After all, like Evangelicals, Muslims can also “find Jesus in their community.” Of course, it’s not the same Jesus, but perhaps the resemblance is close enough for someone with scant interest in doctrinal differences. Exactly what, then, does he have in mind by encouraging mass migration into Europe? One possibility, as I suggested earlier, is that he envisions a kind of multicultural blending of religions. But in order for this to happen, it would be necessary for the respective faiths to dilute their doctrinal positions. Pope Francis seems quite willing to do this on the Catholic side. He has already made substantial concessions to the Chinese communist government on the appointment of bishops. He seems willing to alter Church teachings in order to build bridges with the LGBT “community” and other sexual revolutionaries. And, in general, he prefers to be guided by the prompting of the Spirit rather than by the teachings of the Church.

Moreover, he seems more concerned with political and humanitarian goals than with the goal of getting to heaven. As George Neumayr has noted in The Political Pope, when awarded the Charlemagne Prize, Francis “used his acceptance speech not to call for the restoration of Christianity, but for the spread of a ‘new European humanism.’” And, as Francis sees it, the main obstacle to achieving these humanitarian goals is the fundamentalist Christians who refuse to integrate with Muslim migrants and, in general, fail to adapt to changing times. Perhaps he thinks that a flood of migrants will force fundamentalists to encounter the “other” and come to terms with their “otherness.”

But what about fundamentalist Muslims? A harmonious world religion dedicated to humanitarian ends would require not only a watering-down of Christianity, but also a considerable moderation of Islam. Both in terms of percentages and in absolute numbers, there are far more fundamentalist Muslims in the world than fundamentalist Christians. Francis has acknowledged the existence of fundamentalist Muslims, but he claims that they do not represent “authentic” Islam, and he seems to believe, contrary to much polling data, that they are only a small minority. “All religions have these little groups,” he once said.

A Self-fulfilling Prophecy?

Whether or not he believes that fundamentalists are a small minority, he seems to have a rough strategy for facilitating the emergence of a more moderate Islam. This strategy is to claim that Islam is already—and always has been—a moderate and peaceful faith. Most notably, he asserted in Evangelii Gaudium that “authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Koran are opposed to every form of violence.” [n. 253]

The strategy Francis seems to be employing is referred to by sociologists as a self-fulfilling prophecy. The idea is that if you express high expectations for others, they will endeavor to live up to the expectations and thus fulfill your “prophecy.” But, according to Robert K. Merton, the sociologist who coined the term, “the self-fulfilling prophecy is, in the beginning, a false definition of the situation.” But the false definition or assumption can evoke “a new behavior which makes the original false conception come true.”

Sometimes self-fulfilling prophecies work and sometimes they don’t. A lot depends on the awareness of the subject. Young children are more susceptible to such influence, while adults who understand what is being attempted are less so. I recall reading an article on a radical Islamic website which accused Pope Francis of using just such a strategy. I don’t remember if the author used the term “self-fulfilling prophecy,” but he did complain that the pope was deliberately painting a false but pleasing picture of Islam in order to win Muslims over to a moderate view.

In any event, the self-fulfilling prophecy strategy seems an awfully slender reed upon which to stake the future of the world. For decades now, global leaders have been assuring us that Islam means peace, that violence has nothing to do with Islam, and that the vast majority of Muslims are moderate. Yet most of the evidence suggests that the Western “prophecy” about Islam’s pacific nature is not working. With some notable exceptions, moderates have been losing ground, while fundamentalists are in the ascendancy.

Just as he has little anxiety about the wave of church closings, Francis seems to have little anxiety about the Islamization of Europe. Indeed, as evidenced by his encouragement of mass migration, he seems to have no objection to Islamization.

Either because he truly believes the false narrative that Islam is a religion of peace, or because he believes that the self-fulfilling prophecy strategy will create a more moderate Islam, Francis seems to be at peace with the fact that Islam is spreading rapidly.

Whatever he has in mind, it seems that Pope Francis is betting against the odds. A few weeks ago, those two young Scandinavian women mentioned earlier took a similar gamble when they embarked on a camping trip in Morocco. They were betting their lives on the assumption that the whitewashed narrative of Islam that they had no doubt learned in school and university was the correct one. They lost the “bet.” They had—to borrow a line from Casablanca—been “misinformed” about the situation in Morocco.

Whether Francis has been misinformed about Islam or whether he has adopted a strategy of misinformation, he is taking a huge gamble—not only with his own life, but with the lives of millions. When the religion of Muhammad meets the religion of indifferentism, which seems more likely to prevail?

]]>Pope Francis, Indifferentism, and Islamization"Dare, Monsignor!" Appeal to Clergy from the Lepanto FoundationCFN BlogBrian McCallBrian McCallSun, 06 Jan 2019 16:04:47 +0000https://www.catholicfamilynews.org/blog/2019/1/6/dare-monsignor-appeal-to-clergy-from-the-lepanto-foundation59f88a70bce176951da623c1:59f88b47ec212d7d776a7d73:5c321527aa4a99548f81e43bWhen one lives in a time of revolution, radical changes come quickly, so quickly in fact that it is often easy to forget how much has changed in such a brief period. As such, Catholic Family News is pleased to reprint the following urgent appeal to clergy worldwide, written by Professor Roberto de Mattei (President of the Lepanto Foundation in Rome), because it reminds us all of how drastically the conditions within both the Church and civil society have changed in just the past 25 years (full text, provided below, first appeared here).

Pope John Paul II, who was not all that clear on many issues, spoke very clearly about the resolution of the European Parliament described in Professor de Mattei’s appeal. At the time, the average Catholic (and not just traditionalists) would likely respond that you were crazy if you predicted that virtually every European nation and the United States would legalize so-called homosexual “marriage” by 2018, yet here we are. These seeping changes, however, did not happen by accident or by an undirected evolving course of events. As the appeal makes clear, there was an organized group planning and implementing these subversive changes. They made their plans public in the EU declaration of 1994. And now, 25 years later, the goals declared in Strasbourg have been achieved.

As the testimony of Archbishop Viganò has proven, John Paul II’s stance was easily undermined by the organized and active homosexual lobby within the hierarchy. They have removed the Church as an effective obstacle to the achievement of the goals of the EU resolution. Accordingly, Professor de Mattei, our esteemed colleague and friend, has issued the following respectful challenge to every member of the Church’s hierarchy — cardinals, bishops, and priests, alike. CFN heartily commends him for his efforts and stands with the Lepanto Foundation in this “final battle between the Lord and the reign of satan” over “marriage and the family” (Sister Lucia of Fatima). — Brian M. McCall, Editor-in-Chief

*****

TWENTY-FIVE YEARS LATER...

Twenty-five years ago, on 8 February 1994, the European Parliament voted on a resolution that invited the nations of Europe to promote and give legal protection to homosexuality. In his Angelus address on 20 February 1994, the Holy Father Pope John Paul II appealed to public opinion worldwide, affirming that “the legal approbation of active homosexuality is not morally admissible [...]. The Resolution of the European Parliament has called for the legitimization of a moral disorder. The Parliament has unduly given institutional value to deviant behaviors, which do not conform to God’s plan”.

In May of that same year, the Lepanto Cultural Center [Centro Culturale Lepanto] handed out a manifesto in Strasbourg to parliamentary representatives called, “Europe at Strasbourg: Represented or Betrayed?”. The manifesto made an indignant protest against the promotion of a vice condemned by both Christian and Western conscience and asked the European bishops “to unite their voices to that of the Supreme Pastor [John Paul II] in order to multiply it in their dioceses, by publicly denouncing the moral fault with which the European Assembly has stained itself and warning the flock entrusted to their care of the growing attacks of anti-Christian forces in the world”.

Today, one after another, the principal European nations, including many of those with the most ancient Catholic tradition, have elevated sodomy to a legal right by recognizing, under different forms, so-called “same-sex marriage” and introducing the concept of the crime of “homophobia.” The Pastors of the Church, who should have formed an unbreakable dam of opposition against the homosexualization of society promoted by the political class and by the media-financial oligarchies, have in fact fostered it by their silence. Even at the highest levels of the Church, the practice of homosexuality and of a so-called “gay-friendly” culture that justifies and encourages homosexual vice has spread like a cancer.

Bishop Athanasius Schneider, auxiliary of Astana, Kazakhstan, said in a message dated 28 July 2018, that “We are witnessing an incredible scenario, in which some priests and even bishops and cardinals, without blushing, are already offering grains of incense to the idol of homosexuality or gender ideology, to the applause of the powerful ones of this world, that is, to the applause of politicians, social media giants and powerful international organizations”.

Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, in his historic testimony of 22 August 2018, denounced — using precise names and circumstances — the existence of a “homosexual current in favor of subverting Catholic doctrine regarding homosexuality” and the presence of “homosexual networks, which are now widespread in many dioceses, seminaries, religious orders, etc.,” and which “act under the concealment of secrecy and lies with the power of octopus tentacles, and strangle innocent victims and priestly vocations, and are strangling the entire Church”.

These courageous voices remain isolated even until today. The climate of indifference and cover-up which reigns within the Church has profound moral and doctrinal roots that date back to the Second Vatican Council, when the ecclesiastical hierarchies accepted the process of secularization as an irreversible phenomenon. But when the Church subordinates herself to secularism, the Kingdom of Christ becomes conformed to this world and is reduced to a mere power structure. The militant spirit dissipates, and the Church, instead of converting the world to the law of the Gospel, surrenders the Gospel to the world’s demands.

How we long to hear resounding once again the fiery words of a new Saint Peter Damian or Saint Bernardine of Siena, instead of the infamous statement of Pope Francis, “If a person is gay and is seeking the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge them?” If it is true that the meaning of this statement was distorted by the media, such misuse should have been combatted by means of clear and solemn documents condemning sodomy, as St. Pius V did with the two constitutions Cum Primum of 1 April 1566 and Horrendum Illud Scelus of 30 August 1568. Instead, Pope Francis’ Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia of 8 April 2016 not only was silent about this most grave moral disorder but also relativized the precepts of the natural law, opening the path towards the approval of cohabitation and adultery.

And this is why we now make an appeal to you, Monsignor.

TO SERVE THE CHURCH

The term “Monsignor” evokes a certain dignity, not a power or a bureaucratic function. Each one of the bishops, as Successors of the Apostles, are recognized with the title of “Monsignor,” but simple priests are also able to receive this title. The word “dignity” seems to have lost its meaning today, despite the fact that there was an entire declaration of Vatican II dedicated to it. Dignity means an awareness of a role and mission given by God. Respect for a person’s dignity is the source of a feeling of honor. Your dignity, Monsignor, derives from the honor which you have of serving the Church, without seeking either your own interests or the approval of the powerful. You have received the dignity of Monsignor from the Church, not from the men of the Church, and it is to the Church that you must render an account. The Church is the divine society founded by Jesus Christ, ever-perfect and ever-victorious, both in time and in eternity. The men of the Church may either serve the Church or betray her. Serving the Church means placing the interests of the Church, which are those of Jesus Christ, ahead of one’s personal interests. Betraying the Church means placing the interests of a family, a religious institute, or an ecclesiastical authority taken as a private person ahead of the Truth of the Church, which is the Truth of Jesus Christ, the one Way, Truth and Life (John 14:6).

We would be insulting your intelligence, Monsignor, were we not to suppose that you already have a certain awareness of the crisis in the Church. Certain eminent cardinals, on various occasions, have manifested their unease and concern over what is happening in the Church. The same unease is displayed by the common man, who is profoundly disoriented by the new religious and moral paradigms. In the face of this unease, Monsignor, many times you have put up your hands, seeking to calm the person speaking to you, using words like: “There is nothing we can do but be silent and pray. The Pope is not immortal. Let’s wait for the next conclave”. That’s all we can do, you say. We cannot speak; we cannot act. You adopt silence as the supreme rule of your behavior. Is this attitude the result of human self-serving; of a selfishness that seeks above all else to live quietly; of the opportunism of those who are able to adapt themselves successfully to every situation? To assert this would be to make a judgment about your intentions, and a judgment about intentions cannot be made by men; only God can do this on the Day of Judgment, when we will each stand alone before Him, to listen to His lips pronounce the un-appealable sentence that will send us either to eternal happiness or to eternal damnation.

We who live on earth can only judge facts and words as they objectively appear. And the words with which you explain your behavior, Monsignor, at times appear to be more noble than your true feelings “We ought to follow the Pope, even when he displeases us, because he is the Rock on which Christ has founded His Church,” you say; or “we ought to avoid a schism at any cost, because this would be the most serious disaster for the Church".

Noble words, because they state truths. It is true that the Pope is the foundation of the Church, and that the Church can fear nothing worse than a schism. But what we would like you to reflect on, Monsignor, is that the path of absolute silence that you want to follow will bring harm to the Papacy and will hasten a schism in the Church.

It is true that the Pope is the foundation of the Church, but before being founded on him, the Church is founded on Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the primary and divine foundation of the Church, while Peter is the secondary and human foundation — even if it is true that he is divinely assisted. The divine assistance does not exclude the possibility of error or the possibility of sin. In the history of the Church, there has been no lack of popes who have sinned or erred, without this fact ever prejudicing the institution of the papacy. To say that “we need to always follow the Pope and never depart from him,” while refusing to respectfully correct him in exceptional cases, means attributing to the Church all of the errors which, over the course of the centuries, have been made by the men of the Church. The absence of this distinction between the Church and the men of the Church enables the enemies of the Church to attack her, and many false friends of the Church to refuse to truly serve her.

Equally fraught with consequences is the assertion that to break silence, to tell the truth, and to denounce — if necessary — the infidelity of the same Supreme Pastor, would lead to a schism. The word “schism” means division, and never as in this moment of her history has the Church appeared so internally divided and fragmented. Within each nation, within each diocese, even within each parish, it is impossible to agree on a common way of living according to the Gospel, because each one experiences and lives a different Christianity — both liturgically and dogmatically — with each one constructing their own religion in such a way that the only thing remaining in common is the name “Catholic”, but the essence of Catholicism is no longer present. What are the reasons for this fragmentation? The star that lights the way has disappeared, and the faithful make their way in the darkness of night, following opinions and personal sentiments, without even one voice being raised to remind them of the unchanging doctrine and praxis of the Church. The schism is being caused by the darkness, which is the daughter of silence. Only clear voices, crystalline voices, voices which are entirely faithful to the Tradition, are able to dispel the shadows and permit good Catholics to overcome the divisions which have been provoked by this pontificate, and to avoid new humiliations to the Church beyond those which have already been inflicted upon her by Pope Francis. There is only one way to save the Church from schism: Proclaim the Truth. By remaining silent we will only further the schism.

AN URGENT APPEAL

Monsignor, you who enjoy a certain dignity, you who exercise a moral authority, you who have received an inheritance — what are you afraid of? The world may attack you with defamation and slander. Your superiors may deprive you of your authority and external dignity. But it is to the Lord that you must render an account, as must each one of us on the Day of Judgment, when everything will be weighed and judged according to measure. Do not ask us what you ought to do concretely. If you will dare to ask Him, the Holy Spirit will not fail to suggest to your conscience times, ways, and tones of coming out into the open, in order to be “the light of the world, a city set on a hill, a lamp set on a lampstand” (Matthew 5:13-16).

What we ask of you, Monsignor, is that you assume an attitude of filial criticism, of deferential resistance, of devout moral separation from those responsible for the Church’s self-destruction. Dare to openly encourage those who defend the Church from within, and who publicly profess the entire Truth of the Catholic Faith. Dare to seek out other confreres who will join you and us in issuing that cry of war and of love which St. Louis Marie Grignon de Montfort raised in his “Fiery Prayer” [Prière embrasée] with these prophetic words: “Fire! Fire! Fire! There is a fire in the house of God! There is fire within souls! There is fire even within the Sanctuary!”.

Tongues of fire like those of the day of Pentecost, as well as flashes of fire like those of Hell, seem to be hanging over the earth. A destroying fire, a purifying fire, a restoring fire — destined to engulf the entire world, to consume it and transform it. May the divine fire flare up within us before the fire of God’s wrath does, which will reduce our society to ashes as happened to Sodom and Gomorrha. And this is the reason why, 25 years after the unfortunate resolution of the European Parliament, I now make this appeal to you, for the good of souls, for the honor of the Church, and for the salvation of society.

Monsignor, please accept this appeal, which is also an invocation to the Blessed Mother and to the Angels, that they may intervene, as soon as possible, in order to save the Church and the whole world.

Dare, Monsignor, to take up this holy cause in 2019, and you will find us battling at your side in this good fight!

Roberto de Mattei

President of the Lepanto Foundation

Written at the foot of the Manger, on this First Saturday of January 2019, the Vigil of the Epiphany of the Lord

“Holy Mother Church is facing a crisis that is without precedent in her entire history.” This image of the theologian Serafino M. Lanzetta, which opens the latest book of Antonio Socci, Il segreto di Benedetto XVI. Perché è ancora papa[The Secret of Benedict XVI: Why He Is Still Pope](Milano 2018), invites anyone to read it who wishes to better understand the nature of this crisis as well as the possible ways out of it.

Socci is a brilliant journalist who has dedicated three books to the state of the Church under the pontificate of Pope Francis: Non è Francesco. La Chiesa nella grande tempesta [He Is Not Francis: The Church in The Great Tempest](Milano 2014), La profezia finale[The Final Prophecy] (Milano 2016) and now Il segreto di Benedetto XVI.

Of these three books, the best is the second, above all in the part in which, with accurate documentation, Socci makes a meticulous examination of the most controversial words of the first three years of the reign of Pope Francis. In his latest book, however, Socci develops the thesis which he has already proposed in Non è Francesco, namely, that the election of Jorge Mario Bergoglio is doubtful and perhaps invalid, and that Benedict XVI may still be Pope, because he may have not entirely renounced the Petrine ministry. His renunciation was only “relative” – writes Socci – and Benedict intended “to remain the pope, although purely in an enigmatic way and in an unofficial form, which has not been explained (at least not until a certain future date).”[1]

Peaceful and Universal Acceptance of Pope Francis

Regarding the doubts about the election of Cardinal Bergoglio, the many clues which Socci examines do not provide sufficient proof to sustain his thesis. Apart from the canonical subtleties, there was not one cardinal who participated in the Conclave of 2013 who raised any doubt about the validity of the election. The entire Church accepted and recognized Pope Francis as the legitimate Pope, and according to canon law, the peaceful “universalis Ecclesiae adhaesio [adhesion of the universal Church]” is both a sign and an infallible effect of a valid election of a legitimate Pope. Professor Geraldina Boni, in a profound study entitled “Sopra una rinuncia. La decisione di papa Benedetto XVI e il diritto [Beyond a Resignation. The Decision of Pope Benedict XVI and The Law](Bologna 2015), points out that canonical regulations governing the conclave do not consider an election invalid which is the fruit of bargains, agreements, promises, or other commitments of whatever sort, such as the possible planning of the election of Cardinal Bergoglio.

What Professor Boni writes coincides with what Robert Siscoe and John Salza observe, on the basis of the most authoritative theologians and canonists: “...it is the common doctrine of the Church that the peaceful and universal acceptance of a Pope provides infallible certitude of his legitimacy.”[2]

On the right of the Pope to resign, there are no serious doubts. The new Code of Canon Law addresses the possible resignation of the Pope in can. 332 § 2 with these words: “If it happens that the Roman Pontiff resigns his office, it is required for validity that the resignation is made freely and properly manifested but not that it is accepted by anyone.” The resignation of Benedict XVI was free and ritually manifested. If Benedict XVI was under pressure he would have had to say so, or at least let it be understood. In his Last Conversations with Peter Seewald, he instead declared the contrary, restating that his decision was entirely free, immune from all coercion.

The Morality of Benedict’s Resignation

The action of Benedict XVI, legitimate from a theological and canonical point of view, appears however to be in absolute discontinuity with the tradition and praxis of the Church, and therefore morally reprehensible. In fact, the resignation of a Pope is canonically possible “propter necessitatem vel utilitatem Ecclesiae universalis”, but in order to be morally licit there needs to be a iusta causa (just cause); otherwise the act, while valid, would be morally deplorable and would consitute a serious offense before God. The reason given by Benedict XVI on February 11, 2013 appears to be totally disproportionate to the gravity of the act:

“However, in today’s world, subject to so many rapid changes and shaken by questions of deep relevance for the life of faith, in order to govern the barque of Saint Peter and proclaim the Gospel, both strength of mind and body are necessary, strength which in the last few months, has deteriorated in me to the extent that I have had to recognize my incapacity to adequately fulfill the ministry entrusted to me.”

Socci knows the canonical doctrine and comments: “Since Benedict XVI does not give exceptional reasons, and since we cannot imagine that he wanted to ‘fall into a grave fault,’ the possibilities – apart from being coerced – are two: either his resignation was not a true and proper resignation of the papacy, or his exceptional reasons were not explained.”[3]

One cannot understand how Socci excludes a priori the possibility of a “grave fault” by Benedict XVI. However, this is precisely what it is. The decision of Pope Benedict XVI has created a situation without precedent. In the eyes of the world, it caused a desacralization of the Petrine ministry, which has come to be considered like an agency whose president can resign for reasons of age or physical weakness. Professor Gian Enrico Rusconi has observed that Benedict XVI “with his decision to resign says that there is not any particular protection of the Holy Spirit which can guarantee the mental and psychological firmness of the Vicar of Christ on earth, when he is undermined by old age or illness” (La Stampa, 12 February 2013). Historically, Popes were always elected in old age and often in terrible physical condition, without any medicine at the time being able to help them, in contrast to what it is able to do today. Yet they never resigned or failed to exercise their proper mission. Physical health has never been a criteria for governing the Church.

Historical Examples in Contrast

The old archbishop of Goa in India, weak and afflicted by many trials, asked the Pope to free him from his charge. But St. Pius V responded to him that like a good soldier he ought to die in the field, and in order to instill courage in him he recalled his own sufferings with these words:

“We understand fraternally what you feel, We are old just like you, fatigued by many labors, in the midst of many dangers; but recall that tribulation is the normal path which leads to Heaven and that we ought not to abandon the post assigned to us by Providence. Can you perhaps believe that We too, in the midst of so many concerns so full of responsibility, do not at times feel tired of living? And that We do not desire to return to Our former state of a simple religious? Nevertheless, We are determined not to shake off our yoke but to bear it courageously until God shall call us to Himself. Renounce, therefore, all hope of being able to retire to a quieter life...”

On September 10, 1571, a few days prior to the Battle of Lepanto, the same St. Pius V sent a moving letter to the Grand Master of the Knights of Malta, Pietro de Monte, in which, in order to encourage the old commander, he wrote:

“You will know without any doubt that my cross is heavier than yours, that my strength is now lacking, and how numerous are those who seek to make me succumb. I would certainly have failed and would have already renounced my dignity (something which I have thought of doing on more than one occasion), if I had not more fully loved to place myself entirely into the hands of the Master Who has said: ‘Whoever wishes to follow Me must renounce himself.’”

The abdication of Benedict XVI does not reveal the renunciation of self, expressed in the words of St. Pius V, but rather it manifests the renouncing spirit of the churchmen of our time. It is the renunciation of carrying out the highest mission which a man can fulfill on earth: that of governing the Church of Christ. It is the flight before the wolves by the one who, in his first homily on April 24, 2005, said, “Pray for me, that I may not flee for fear of the wolves.”

Benedict’s Final Public Discourse, A Point of Contention

Antonio Socci cites the last official and public discourse of the pontificate of Benedict XVI on February 27, 2013, in which he said concerning his ministry: “The real gravity of the decision was also due to the fact that from that moment on I was engaged always and forever by the Lord. [...] The ‘always’ is also a ‘forever’ – there can no longer be a return to the private sphere. My decision to resign the active exercise of the ministry does not revoke this.”

“A disruptive expression,” comments Socci, “because if with his act of resignation Benedict renounced only ‘the active exercise of the ministry’, it means that he did not intend to renounce the ministry in itself. [...] In the light of this final discourse, one understands why Joseph Ratzinger has remained in the ‘enclosure of Peter’ [the Vatican], he still signs his name Benedict XVI, he calls himself ‘Pope Emeritus’, he still uses the papal heraldic insignia and he continues to dress as Pope.”[4]

This affirmation, taken literally, as Socci intends it to be, is theologically erroneous. When he is elected, the Pope receives the office of supreme jurisdiction, not a sacrament carrying the imprint of indelible character. The Papacy is not a spiritual or sacramental condition, but rather an “office”, or more accurately an institution. According to the ecclesiology of Vatican II, however, the Church is above all a “sacrament” and ought to be stripped of its institutional dimension. Here it is forgotten that, if the Pope is equal to every bishop through his episcopal consecration, he is superior to every bishop in virtue of his office, which assures him full jurisdiction over all of the bishops of the world, either considered individually or as a whole. [Editor’s Note: For a more detailed explanation of this topic, see Professor De Mattei’s 2018 CFN Conference speech, “Tu es Petrus: True Devotion to the Chair of Saint Peter”.]

Professor Violi and Archbishop Gänswein Contribute to Confusion

Socci also makes reference to the questionable study of Professor Stefano Violi La rinuncia di Benedetto XVI: Tra storia, diritto e coscienza (“Rivista Teologica di Lugano” n. 2/2013, pp. 203-214), which introduces the distinction between the “office”, which it says Benedict resigned, and the Petrine munus, which it says he continues to hold. The bizarre thesis of Violi seems to have inspired Archbishop Georg Gänswein, secretary of Benedict XVI, in his discourse given on May 20, 2016, at the Pontifical Gregorian University, in which he affirmed:

“Since February 2013 the papal ministry is therefore no longer what it was before. It is and remains the foundation of the Catholic Church; and yet it is a foundation which Benedict XVI has profoundly and permanently transformed during his exceptional pontificate… Since the election of his successor Francis, on March 13, 2013, there are not therefore two popes, but de facto an expanded ministry — with an active member and a contemplative member. This is why Benedict XVI has not given up either his name or the white cassock. This is why the correct name by which to address him even today is ‘Your Holiness’; and this is also why he has not retired to a secluded monastery, but within the Vatican — as if he had only taken a step to the side to make room for his successor and a new stage in the history of the papacy…”

Benedict, Socci emphasizes, may have renounced his juridical office, but he continues to exercise “the eminently spiritual essence of the Petrine munus.”[5] His resignation has transformed the papal ministry into an Ausnahmepontifikat (“pontificate of exception”), using the term of Archbishop Gänswein. “Benedict XVI did not have the intention of abandoning the papacy, and he has not renounced the acceptance of it which he did in April 2005 (even considering it ‘irrevocable’) and thus – strictly using logic – he is still pope.”[6] “There is objectively a ‘state of exception’, or rather, in the expression of Msgr. Gänswein, a ‘pontificate of exception’, which presupposes an absolutely exceptional situation in the history of the Church and of the world.”[7]

Among the best works which refute this attempt to re-define the pontifical Primacy, there is an accurate essay by Cardinal Walter Brandmüller entitled Renuntiatio Papae. Alcune riflessioni storico-canonistiche (“Archivio Giuridico” 3-4 [2016], pp. 655- 674). The tradition and praxis of the Church affirms with clarity, affirms the cardinal, that one man and one man only is the Pope, inseparable in his unity and in his power. “The substance of the Papacy is thus clearly defined by Sacred Scripture and by the authentic Tradition, and so no Pope is authorized to redefine his office” (p. 660). If Benedict XVI believes that he is still the Pope, simultaneously with Francis, he would negate the truth of Faith by which there exists only one Vicar of Christ, and he would have to be considered a heretic or suspected of heresy.

On the other hand, if the true Pope is Benedict and not Francis, someone ought to note it, and yet not one cardinal has ever done so. The consequences would be devastating. What would then happen upon the death of Benedict XVI? Would they have to hold a conclave, with Pope Francis still sitting on the papal throne? And if Francis is an antipope, when he dies who would elect the true Pope, since the large number cardinals nominated by him would have to be considered invalid?

Benedict’s Resignation a Mystical Mission?

For Socci, the decision of Benedict XVI was a mystical decision. “We are dealing with a true and personal call on the part of God. The call to a mission.”[8] What is this mission? “Benedict does not abandon the flock in danger. He is in prayer in his hermitage, interceding for the Church and for the world, and his comfort and illuminating teaching comes to the Church through a thousand little streams.”[9] The silent figure of Benedict is for Socci a “presence” in the enclosure of Peter which averts schisms and divisions, which restrains the advance of the Revolution and which assures peace in the world. The “mystical” mission of Benedict XVI is a political mission, which Socci describes thus at the conclusion of his book:

“Here we may see the greatness of the vision of Benedict XVI: in an insane historical moment, in which the West, ever more de-Christianized, has absurdly rejected and attacked Russia (a Russia that is finally free and has become Christian) and has sought to marginalize her, sending her back to Asiatic isolation or into the embrace of communist China, the dialogue which the Pope [Benedict] had undertaken with the Russian Orthodox Church aimed at realizing the dream of John Paul II: a Europe composed of people united by their Christian roots from the Atlantic to the Urals.”[10]

The mysticism which Socci attributes to Benedict XVI seems to be merely his own literary fantasy, while in his book he ignores the great theological debate between Modernism and anti-Modernism, just as he ignores the Second Vatican Council and its dramatic consequences. The Papacy has been despoiled of its institutional dimension and instead “personalized”. For Socci, John Paul II and Benedict XVI incarnate the “good”, while Francis is the expression of “evil”. In reality, the rapport between Francis and his predecessors is much closer than Socci imagines, if for no other reason than it was the improvident resignation of Benedict XVI which opened the way for Cardinal Bergoglio. The final photographs of Benedict XVI reveal an exhausted man, constrained by Divine Providence to assist in the debacle which he himself provoked. Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the defeated one of the conclave of 2005, became the victor of the conclave of 2013, and Benedict XVI, the victor of the preceding conclave, emerges from the story as the great defeated one.

I esteem Antonio Socci for his authentic Catholic faith and for the independence of his thought. I share his severe judgment on Pope Francis. But the resignation of Benedict XVI, which for Socci was the choice of a mission, is for me the symbol of the surrender of the Church to the world.

]]>Tentative Schedule for CFN 2019 Conference Available NowAbolition of Ecclesia Dei Commission--Good or Bad News?CFN BlogBrian McCallBrian McCallFri, 28 Dec 2018 14:00:00 +0000https://www.catholicfamilynews.org/blog/2018/12/28/abolition-of-ecclesia-dei-commission-good-or-bad-news59f88a70bce176951da623c1:59f88b47ec212d7d776a7d73:5c2546b04fa51a0618584b86Various sources are reporting that the Vatican is preparing to eliminate the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei, perhaps as early as January 2019. See for example, this report from Rorate Caeli. The commission was named after the Motu Proprio by John Paul II of the same name which was issued in response to the consecration of four bishops by Archbishop Lefebvre. In the fourth paragraph of the document John Paul II identifies what he saw as the root disagreement between himself and Archbishop Lefebvre to be an “incomplete and contradictory notion of tradition.” He went on to specify what he meant: “Incomplete, because it does not take sufficiently into account the living character of Tradition, which, as the Second Vatican Council clearly taught, ‘comes from the apostles and progresses in the Church with the help of the Holy Spirit.’” (emphasis added) In so doing John Paul II made clear that the primary difficulty was doctrinal and not liturgical. A “preference” for the former liturgical rite was tolerable as long as the one offering the traditional form makes clear he accepts the novelties of Vatican II including the concept of “living tradition” that “progresses.” John Paul II asks the bishops of the world to be tolerant of “the feelings of all those who are attached to the Latin liturgical tradition.” The point is very clear, it is permitted to prefer the traditional forms of Mass out of an emotional attachment, but to do so on principle or for reasons of doctrine is not permitted.

Benedict XVI when issuing his Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum made clear that being emotionally attached to the older form of Mass was not problematic as long as Vatican II was accepted. In his letter to the bishops accompanying Summorum Pontificum he contrasted those attached to Archbishop Lefebvre and his successors from “Many people who clearly accepted the binding character of the Second Vatican Council, . . . [who] nonetheless also desired to recover the form of the sacred liturgy that was dear to them.” John Paul II (in Ecclesia Dei paragraph 6.a.) and Benedict XVI made clear that the primary purpose of the Ecclesia Dei Commission was not liturgical but to work to draw clerics of the Society of St. Pius X and religious communities affiliated with it away from the SSPX and into a canonical structure under the Commission. Steadily from 1988 onward the Commission pursued this mission facilitating most notably the priests who left the SSPX to form the Fraternity of St. Peter, the Institute of the Good Shepherd, the Apostolic Administration of St. John Vianey, and the Sons of the Redeemer (on Papa Stronsay).

Two years after Summorum Pontificum, Benedict XVI made even more clear that the primary mission of the Ecclesia Dei Commission was not liturgical but doctrinal when he ended the Commission’s independent status within the Curia not by placing it under the Congregation for Divine Worship (which oversees the liturgy of the Church and which would be the natural home of a commission whose purpose was liturgical) but the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

The Commission has always been in the awkward position of having to answer liturgical questions and make legal determinations regarding the rubrics of the Traditional Mass when it has no connection with the aspect of the papal bureaucracy that specializes in liturgy. Benedict XVI in his 2009 reorganization of the Ecclesia Dei Commission emphasized that the issues dividing the Vatican and the SSPX were doctrinal. The SSPX also has consistently maintained the same perspective as recently as the communique following the November meeting with the Prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

In light of this history, are we to consider the rumors of the amalgamation of the Ecclesia Dei Commission as a positive development or an omen of bad things to come? in my opinion it is likely neither. It merely rearranges the deck chairs and does not fundamentally alter the discussions with the SSPX. It was clear from at least 2012 that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was directing those discussions and making the important decisions. The Secretary of the Ecclesia Dei Commission, Archbishop Guido Pozzo, proved an unreliable source for the Vatican’s true position. His apparent publicly stated preference for a practical agreement resulting in canonical regularization without the SSPX accepting as true all statements in Vatican II and the post-Councilior teaching was overruled by the Commission who demanded a signed capitulation to the Council and an acceptance of the legitimacy of the New Mass. Thus, at most the amalgamation may eliminate a confusing layer of bureaucracy but would not fundamentally change the dynamic. It could end the curial career of Archbishop Pozzo but aside for the effect on him, there would likely be any large impact.

On the bad omen side, I believe it is unlikely a prelude to an attempted suppression of Summorum Pontificum. If Francis wanted to eradicate celebration of the Old Mass by the canonically recognized communities he would simply do so. He showed no hesitancy to destroy the Franciscans of the Immaculata for their movement toward a wider use of the Old liturgy. He simply ignored law and equitable juridical processes. Given this and other heavy handed suppression of opponents, he would not seem to feel constrained by the existence of the commission. Finally, he seems to share the position of his two predecessors that emotional attachment to the older liturgies can be tolerated within the Church (even though he may have more of a personal aversion to the older forms than Benedict) as long as those attached do not combine that attachment with a public resistance to the novelties of Vatican II as progressing even further under his direction. Personal preference for use of the older forms can still be purchased with silence on the novelties that Francis is taking to their natural conclusions. The real objective is to convince anyone who refuses the new liturgy because of its connection to doctrinal novelties to abandon the doctrinal objection. This objective is clearly preserved by simply streamlining the bureaucratic structure.

Thus, if the reports turn out to be correct, and the Ecclesia Dei Commission disappears, I think it unlikely to have a material effect on the situation on the ground.

]]>Abolition of Ecclesia Dei Commission--Good or Bad News?Finding Peace in the Crisis, Part IIICFN BlogPaul FolbrechtThu, 27 Dec 2018 16:17:30 +0000https://www.catholicfamilynews.org/blog/2018/12/27/finding-peace-in-the-crisis-part-iii59f88a70bce176951da623c1:59f88b47ec212d7d776a7d73:5c24f7cdcd8366d27f6e2dcc“These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you shall have distress: but have confidence, I have overcome the world.” ~ John 16:33

“For whatsoever is born of God, overcometh the world: and this is the victory which overcometh the world, our faith.” ~ 1 John 5:4

Editor’s Note: On the Feast of St. John the Apostle and third day within the Octave of Our Lord’s Nativity, we offer readers this third and final installment of a series whose importance will no doubt only increase throughout the approaching new year (Part I and Part II also available). As the author aptly concludes, “Instead of being driven to madness over the latest papal utterance that has no real bearing on the Faith, we must immerse ourselves in the traditional liturgy, the massive body of spiritual works of the great saints and mystics, and an intense prayer life. Love for the Church compels us to oppose the Pope, materially, and love for the Church compels us to defend him, formally.” May we all strive to do so, for the greater glory of God and the salvation and sanctification of souls!

*****

Ordinary Magisterium Violated?

An argument sometimes put forth is that this or that statement of the Pope constitutes heresy per a violation of some dogma of the Church’s Ordinary Universal Magisterium.

First, of course, whether or not a material heresy is actually formal (pertinacious – the sin of heresy) is another question, as is the Church’s judgement concerning pertinacity, as discussed in Part II of this series.

Furthermore, it should be noted that, apart from these things, determining the body of the infallible content of the OUM is not as easy as might be thought. The Catholic Encyclopedia makes this point regarding the OUM as an organ of infallibility:

“…while for subsequent ages down to our own day it continues to be theoretically true that the Church may, by the exercise of this ordinary teaching authority arrive at a final and infallible decision regarding doctrinal questions, it is true at the same time that in practice it may be impossible to prove conclusively that such unanimity as may exist has a strictly definitive value in any particular case, unless it has been embodied in a decree of an ecumenical council, or in the ex cathedra teaching of the pope, or, at least, in some definite formula such as the Athanasian Creed. Hence, for practical purposes and in so far as the special question of infallibility is concerned, we may neglect the so-called magisterium ordinarium (‘ordinary magisterium’) and confine our attention to ecumenical councils and the pope.” (Emphasis added)

The OUM, by definition, is universal across both time and space. For a doctrine to belong to this infallible organ, it must be demonstrable that it has been taught essentially “always and everywhere.”

Notes Dom Paul Nau:

“The infallibility of the Ordinary Magisterium… is not that of a judgement, not that of an act to be considered in isolation… It is that of the guarantee bestowed on a doctrine by the simultaneous or continuous convergence of a plurality of affirmations and explanations; none of which could bring positive certitude if it were taken by itself alone.”[1]

So, while there is no doubt that Tradition teaches that capital punishment is morally licit, whether or not this is an infallible teaching of the OUM is another matter, academically speaking.

Perpetually Indefectible

Christ’s promise that the gates of hell themselves have no power over His Church (cf. Matt. 16:18) should always be our consolation. Ott puts it beautifully:

“The intrinsic reason for the indefectibility of the Church of Christ lies in her inner relation with Christ, Who is the foundation of the Church (1 Cor 3:11) and with the Holy Ghost Who indwells in her as essence in life principle.”[2]

And further:

“The indefectibility of the Church was contested…by the reformers, who maintained that under the Papacy the Church had degenerated and departed from the teaching of Christ…[and] by the Modernists, who maintained a substantial development [i.e. change] in the teaching and constitution of the Church.”[3]

With these two groups we can include those who refuse to acknowledge the Pope whom the Church does, who thus also deny the indefectibility of the Church in practice. For them, as for Luther, the visible Church has failed, not just materially, but completely.

St. Bellarmine explains that the Savior’s promise (which entails both indefectibility and the closely related property of visibility) is upheld by reason itself:

“…it is proved by natural reason. Firstly, if at some time only an invisible Church remained in the world, then at some time salvation was impossible for those who are outside the Church, since they cannot be saved unless they enter the Church...but they could not enter a Church that they were ignorant of, therefore they have no remedy.”[4]

The great Doctor is teaching that reason itself demands the Church be both indefectible and formally visible, because if she did not always exist or was not recognizable, formally, it could not be possible for Christ to create the demand that men enter her for salvation.

It might be noted that since formal Church membership is generally, but not specifically, necessary, there may be times when the Church seems virtually invisible, and whereby souls at that time are dispensed from such obligation. This would be a sort of broader form of Baptism of Desire.

The Council of Trent teaches:

“If anyone saith, that the sacraments of the New Law are not necessary unto salvation, but superfluous; and that, without them, or without the desire thereof, men obtain of God, through faith alone, the grace of justification; though all (the sacraments) are not indeed necessary for every individual: let him be anathema.”[5]

Just as the desire for Baptism can substitute for water baptism and bring the associated graces, this objection goes, desire to enter the true Church would suffice for actually doing so. While that is no doubt essentially true (and nothing new), it has nothing to do with the Church’s formal visibility and indefectibility.

Again, there is no doubt that, today, the Church’s supernatural nature is materially obscured. The sins of churchmen, the proliferation of novel, vague, and/or contradictory teachings, and the dilution and corruption of her liturgy serve to turn the face of the Church into something abhorrent, just as the Savior’s perfect countenance was horribly disfigured during His Passion.

But these things are unrelated to the Church’s formal reality, as the Church’s body of doctrine has not been disturbed, and the hierarchy is intact. The Church is visible via these things, especially the former, wherein her immutable beauty is and will always be unperturbed.

So, the Church remains indefectible, and as visible, formally, as ever.

The Key to Peace – A Properly Informed Intellect

A large part of the key to maintaining peace today is to simply understand Church doctrine well enough to know that Pope Francis is not threatening the Church, formally, which is and will remain intact. Those who lack peace in the present crisis are largely those who lament, “This is not possible,” and despair because they believe the Church should not be able to suffer like this. Yet it is possible, and a full and proper understanding of what the Church teaches about her nature makes this clear.

Having personal peace at this time is not to be confused with lacking empathy for those who do not, or, especially, those who are suffering from unjust persecution, the lack of availability of reverent sacraments and solid doctrine, and the other manifestations of the evil of the crisis.

Let us not forget the dogmatic teaching of the Church regarding the very raison d'être of the papal office:

“For the Holy Spirit was promised to the successors of Peter not so that they might, by His revelation, make known some new doctrine, but that, by His assistance, they might religiously guard and faithfully expound the revelation or deposit of faith transmitted by the apostles. Indeed, their apostolic teaching was embraced by all the venerable fathers and reverenced and followed by all the holy orthodox doctors, for they knew very well that this See of St. Peter always remains unblemished by any error, in accordance with the divine promise of our Lord and Savior to the prince of His disciples: ‘I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail; and when you have turned again, strengthen your brethren.’ [Luke 22:32]”[6] (Emphasis added)

Yet, the current Pope’s closest advisors brag that he not only fails to guard and expound the Deposit of Faith (Scripture and Tradition), but ignores it, preferring the novelty of his own “God of surprises” instead. Novelty has always been the mark of the heterodox, and thus it can be safely ignored.

In short, in terms of teaching, this Pope can be safely ignored in practice, personally, and resisted, publicly. We must acknowledge him as the formal head of the Body, but resist the heterodox interpretations of Amoris Laetitia, ignore the vague nonsense of Laudato Si, and the rest of his non-binding, non-Catholic novelty.

Instead of being driven to madness over the latest papal utterance that has no real bearing on the Faith, we must immerse ourselves in the traditional liturgy, the massive body of spiritual works of the great saints and mystics, and an intense prayer life.

Love for the Church compels us to oppose the Pope, materially, and love for the Church compels us to defend him, formally.

As the Church concludes the holy season of Advent, it is opportune for us to meditate upon the difficult circumstances of the Holy Family on the eve of the first Christmas. For this, we again turn to the revelations to the 17th-century Spanish nun, Ven. Maria of Agreda. Her extensive writings, known to us as The Mystical City of God, served as the record of the revelations which she received from the Blessed Virgin herself on the mystery of salvation and her hidden life as the Mother of our Divine Savior. Today’s article focuses on the five-day journey of Mary and Joseph from Nazareth to Bethlehem.

The Mystical City of God is available in print edition in English as well as online. All text below (in italics) is from Volume II (The Incarnation), Book Two, Chapter IX. It describes the magnificent celestial procession of angels which accompanied and guarded Joseph and Mary on their trek south from Galilee into Judea. We also see that the Holy Family kept to itself as far as possible, except for the inevitable interactions with various people each evening as Joseph sought suitable lodging for his pregnant wife. We gain a glimpse of Joseph’s anxiety and dismay in his nightly search for a room, which culminated in his rejection at more than fifty places in Bethlehem itself before, as a desperate last resort, he settled for a rude cave outside the city walls.

The previous chapter (VIII) describes the decree of Caesar Augustus directing an imperial census and its impact on the Holy Family. Joseph, distraught at being suddenly required to travel some 90 miles to Bethlehem to comply with the Roman edict, did not want to leave his wife under any circumstances, especially with her delivery so near. Yet he feared the dangers of the winter journey for her and the possibility of her having to give birth in some unknown and difficult place. Meanwhile, the Blessed Virgin, although aware of the divine prophecy that mandated the birth of her Child in Bethlehem, said nothing of this to her husband. The chapter is a touching short story on the nature of love and obedience in a marriage blessed by God and under His providence.

*****

The most pure Mary and the glorious Saint Joseph departed from Nazareth for Bethlehem alone, poor and humble in the eyes of the world. None of the mortals thought more of them than what was warranted by their poverty and humility. But oh, the wonderful sacraments of the Most High, hidden to the proud, and unpenetrated by the wisdom of the flesh! They did not walk alone, poor or despised, but prosperous, rich and in magnificence. They were most worthy of the immense love of the eternal Father and most estimable in His eyes. They carried with them the Treasure of heaven, the Deity itself. The whole court of the celestial ministers venerated them. All the inanimate beings recognized the living and true Ark of the Testament (Josue 3:16) more readily than the waters of the Jordan recognized its type and shadow, when they courteously laid open and free the path for its passage and for those that followed it. They were accompanied by the ten thousand angels, which as mentioned were appointed by God Himself as the servants of her Majesty during that whole journey. These heavenly squadrons marched along as their retinue in human forms visible to the heavenly Lady, more refulgent than so many suns. She herself walked in their midst better guarded and defended than the bed of Solomon, surrounded by the sixty valiant ones of Israel, girded with their swords (Cant. 3:7). Besides these ten thousand angels there were many others, who descended from heaven as messengers of the eternal Father to His Only-begotten made man in His most holy Mother, and who ascended from earth as their ambassadors with messages and treaties from them to the heavenly Father.

In the midst of this royal retinue, hidden from the gaze of men, most holy Mary and Joseph proceeded on their way secure that their feet would not be bruised by the stone of tribulation (Psalm 90:12), since the Lord had commanded His angels to be their defense and watchfulness. This command the most faithful ministers, as vassals of their great Queen, fulfilled with wonder and delight, seeing centered in a mere creature such great sacraments, such perfections, and immense treasures of the Divinity, and seeing in Her all this distinction united to dignity and grace far exceeding their own angelic capacity. They composed new songs in honor of the Lord, whom they saw reclining as the highest King of glory, on His throne of gold (Cant. 3:9); and in honor of the heavenly Mother, who was like His living and incorruptible chariot, or like the fertile ear of corn of the promised land, enclosing the living grain (Lev. 23:10) or like the rich merchant ship, which brings the grain to the house of bread, in order that dying in the earth it might be multiplied for heaven (John 12:24). Their journey lasted five days, for on account of the pregnancy of his Spouse, Saint Joseph shortened each day’s journey. The sovereign Queen experienced no darkness of night on the way; for a few times, when their travel extended beyond nightfall the holy angels spread about such effulgence as not all the lights of heaven in their noontide splendor would have thrown forth in the clearest heavens. This light and vision of the angels also Saint Joseph enjoyed at those times; then all of them together would form celestial choirs, in which they and the two holy travelers alternated in singing wonderful hymns and canticles of praise, converting the fields into new heavens. During this whole journey the Queen was rejoiced by the sight of her resplendent ministers and vassals and by the sweet interior conversation held with them.

With these wonderful favors and delights, however, the Lord joined some hardships and inconveniences, which the divine Mother encountered on the way. For the concourse of people in the taverns, occasioned by the imperial edict, was very disagreeable and annoying to the modest and retiring Virgin-Mother and her spouse. On account of their poverty and timid retirement they were treated with less hospitality and consideration than others, especially the well-to-do; for the world judges and usually confers its favors according to outward appearance and according to personal influence. Our holy pilgrims were obliged repeatedly to listen to sharp reprimands in the taverns, at which they arrived tired out by their journey, and in some of them they were refused admittance as worthless and despicable people. Several times they assigned to the Mistress of heaven and earth some corner of the hallway, while at others She did not fare even so well, being obliged to retire with her husband to places still more humble and unbecoming in the estimation of the world. But in whatever places She tarried, how contemptible so ever it might be considered, the courtiers of heaven established their court around their supreme King and sovereign Queen. Immediately they surrounded and enclosed them like an impenetrable wall, securing the bridal chamber of Solomon against the terrors of the night. Her most faithful spouse Joseph, seeing the Mistress of heaven so well guarded by the angelic hosts, betook himself to rest and sleep; for to this She urged him on account of the hardships of travel. She, however, continued her celestial colloquies with the ten thousand angels of her retinue.

Solomon, in the Canticles, describes in diverse metaphors and similitudes many great mysteries of the Queen of heaven, but in the third chapter he refers more particularly to what happened to the heavenly Mother in her pregnancy and during this journey. During this time was fulfilled to the letter all that is said of the couch of Solomon (Cant. 3:7), of his chariot and of his golden bed, of the guard, which was stationed around it enjoying the divine vision; also, all the other sayings, which are contained in those prophecies. What I have pointed out will suffice to make them understood, and they should excite our admiration of the wonderful sacraments of God’s activity for the good of man. Who is there among mortals whose heart is not softened? Or who is so proud as not to be abashed? Or so careless as not to be filled with wonder at such miraculous extremes? The infinite and true God hidden and concealed in the virginal womb of a tender Maiden, full of grace and beauty, innocent, pure, sweet, pleasing and amiable in the eyes of God and of men, surpassing all that the Lord God has ever or shall ever create! To see this great Lady, bearing the treasure of the Divinity, despised, persecuted, neglected, and cast out by the blind ignorance and pride of the world! And on the other hand, while She is thus pushed aside into the last places, to see Her loved and esteemed by the triune God, regaled by His caresses, served by His angels, revered, defended and assisted with the greatest anxiety and watchfulness! O children of men, slow and hard of hearts! (Psalm. 4:3). How deceitful are your ways and how erroneous is your judgment in esteeming the rich and despising the poor (James 2:2), exalting the proud and humiliating the lowly, applauding the braggarts and casting out the just! Blind is your choice and full of error your judgment, and you will find yourselves frustrated in all your desires. Ambitiously you seek riches and treasures, and you find yourself in poverty beating the air; if you had received the true ark of God, you would have been blessed by the hand of the Almighty, like Obededom (2 Samuel [Kings] 6:11), but because you have treated it unworthily, many of you have experienced the punishment of Oza (2 Samuel [Kings] 6:6-7).

The heavenly Lady observed and knew the secrets of the different souls of those She met, penetrating into the very thoughts and conditions of each, whether of grace or of guilt in their different degrees. Concerning many souls, She also knew whether they were predestined or reprobate, whether they would persevere, fall, or again rise up. All this variety of insight moved Her to the exercise of heroic virtues as well in regard to the ones as to the others. For many of them She obtained the grace of perseverance, for others efficacious help to rise from their sin to grace; for others, again, She prayed to the Lord with affectionate tears, feeling most intense sorrow for the reprobate, though She did not pray as efficaciously for them. Many times, worn out by these sorrows, much more than by the hardships of travel, the strength of her body gave way; on such occasions the holy angels, full of refulgent light and beauty, bore Her up in their arms, in order that She might rest and recuperate. The sick, afflicted and indigent whom She met on the way, She consoled and assisted by asking her most holy Son to come to their aid in their necessities and adversities. She kept Herself silently aloof from the multitude, preoccupied with the Fruit of her divine pregnancy, which was already evident to all. Such was the return which the Mother of mercy made for the inhospitality of mortals.

For the greater reproach of human ingratitude, it happened also that once during these wintry days they reached a stopping-place in the midst of a cold rain and snow storm (for the Lord did not spare them this inconvenience), and they were obliged to take shelter in the stables of the animals, because the owners would not furnish better accommodation. The irrational beasts showed them the courtesy and kindness which was refused by their human fellow-beings; for they retreated in reverence at the entrance of their Maker and of His Mother, who carried Him in her virginal womb. It is true the Queen of creation could command the winds, the frost and the snow not to inconvenience Her; but She would not give such a command in order not to deprive Herself of suffering in imitation of her most holy Son, even before He came forth into the world. Therefore, the inclemencies of the weather affected Her to a certain extent. The faithful Saint Joseph, however, did his utmost to shield Her; and still more did the holy angels seek to protect Her, especially the holy prince Michael, who remained at the right side of his Queen without leaving Her even for a moment; several times, when She became tired, he led Her by the arm along the way. Whenever the Lord permitted, he also shielded Her against the weather and performed many other services for the heavenly Queen and the blessed Fruit of her womb, Jesus.

Thus, variously and wonderfully assisted, our travelers arrived at the town of Bethlehem at four o’clock of the fifth day, a Saturday. As it was at the time of the winter solstice, the sun was already sinking and the night was falling. They entered the town, and wandered through many streets in search of a lodging-house or inn for staying overnight. They knocked at the doors of their acquaintances and nearer family relations; but they were admitted nowhere and in many places they met with harsh words and insults. The most modest Queen followed her spouse through the crowds of people, while he went from house to house and from door to door. Although She knew that the hearts and the houses of men were to be closed to them, and although to expose her state at her age to the public gaze was more painful to her modesty than their failure to procure a night-lodging, She nevertheless wished to obey Saint Joseph and suffer this indignity and unmerited shame. While wandering through the streets they passed the office of the public registry and they inscribed their names and paid the fiscal tribute in order to comply with the edict and not be obliged to return. They continued their search, betaking themselves to other houses. But having already applied at more than fifty different places, they found themselves rejected and sent away from them all. The heavenly spirits were filled with astonishment at these exalted mysteries of the Most High, which manifested the patience and meekness of his Virgin Mother and the unfeeling hardness of men. At the same time, they blessed the Almighty in His works and hidden sacraments, since from that day on He began to exalt and honor poverty and humility among men.

It was nine o’clock at night when the most faithful Joseph, full of bitter and heartrending sorrow, returned to his most prudent Spouse and said: “My sweetest Lady, my heart is broken with sorrow at the thought of not only not being able to shelter Thee as Thou deservest and as I desire, but in not being able to offer Thee even any kind of protection from the weather, or a place of rest, a thing rarely or never denied to the most poor and despised in the world. No doubt heaven, in thus allowing the hearts of men to be so unmoved as to refuse us a night-lodging, conceals some mystery. I now remember, Lady, that outside the city walls there is a cave, which serves as a shelter for shepherds and their flocks. Let us seek it out; perhaps it is unoccupied, and we may there expect some assistance from heaven, since we receive none from men on earth.” The most prudent Virgin answered: “My spouse and my master, let not thy kindest heart be afflicted because the ardent wishes which the love of thy Lord excites in thee cannot be fulfilled. Since I bear Him in my womb, let us, I beseech thee, give thanks for having disposed events in this way. The place of which thou speakest shall be most satisfactory to me. Let thy tears of sorrow be turned into tears of joy, and let us lovingly embrace poverty, which is the inestimable and precious treasure of my most holy Son. He came from heaven in order to seek it, let us then afford Him an occasion to practice it in the joy of our souls; certainly, I cannot be better delighted than to see thee procure it for me. Let us go gladly wherever the Lord shall guide us.” The holy angels accompanied the heavenly pair, brilliantly lighting up the way, and when they arrived at the city gate, they saw that the cave was forsaken and unoccupied. Full of heavenly consolation, they thanked the Lord for this favor, and then happened what I shall relate in the following chapter.

Fourth Sunday of Advent

By Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen, O.C.D.

1) “Call together the nations, tell it among the people and say: Behold our Savior cometh!” (Roman Breviary). The message becomes more and more urgent: in a few days, the Word of God made flesh will show Himself to the world. We must hasten our preparations and make our hearts worthy of Him.

The Incarnation of the Word is the greatest proof of God’s infinite love for men; today’s liturgy very appropriately recalls to our mind the wonderful words: “I have loved thee with an everlasting love, therefore have I drawn thee, taking pity on thee” (Jer. 31:3). Yes, God has loved man from all eternity, and in order to draw him to Himself, He did not hesitate to send “His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh” (Rom. 8:3). With hearts full of love, we must run to meet Love Who is about to appear “incarnate” in the Infant Jesus. May it be a love that is faithful in great things as well as in small, an ingenious love. “Love is repaid by love!” This is the motto which has made saints, and spurred a multitude of souls to greater generosity.

With this love prepare for Christmas. Be in this love faithful, for as St. Paul says in the Epistle (1 Cor. 4:1-5), “What we desire is that everyone may be found faithful.”

2) “Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight His paths. Every valley shall be filled; and every mountain and hill shall be brought low.” The voice of John the Baptist, the great Advent preacher, is heard again in today’s Gospel (Luke 3:1-16), inviting us to prepare “the way of the Lord.”

This invitation is especially a call to humility; John was not only the herald of this virtue, but its model too. We know, by the testimony of Jesus Himself, that he was “more than a prophet” and that “there hath not risen among them, that are born of women, a greater than John the Baptist” (Matt. 11:9, 11). John claimed to be nothing more than a mere voice, “the voice of one crying in the wilderness: Make straight the way of the Lord,” and declared that he baptized only with water, while another would come who would baptize in the Holy Spirit, another of whom John protested himself unworthy to loose “the latchet of His shoe” (John 1:23, 27). And further, speaking of the Savior’s coming, John adds, “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30). Today’s Office gathers up all this magnificent testimony of St. John the Baptist, as if to give us a concrete idea of the profound sentiments of humility with which, in our heart, we ought to make smooth “the way of the Lord.'“ If the valleys, that is, our deficiencies, are to be filled up by love, then the mountains and hills, that is, the vain pretenses of pride, must be made low by humility.

A heart filled with self-love and pride cannot be filled with God, and too small will be the place reserved in it for the sweet Babe of Bethlehem.

]]>Advent Meditations: Behold the Savior ComesSaved by “Conscience”? The Gospel According to BarronCFN BlogMatt GaspersMatt GaspersSat, 22 Dec 2018 14:44:41 +0000https://www.catholicfamilynews.org/blog/2018/12/22/saved-by-conscience-the-gospel-according-to-barron59f88a70bce176951da623c1:59f88b47ec212d7d776a7d73:5c1e43730ebbe84faf24cba6Bishop Robert Barron, the well-known founder of “Word on Fire Catholic Ministries” and an auxiliary bishop of the archdiocese of Los Angeles (appointed by Pope Francis in 2015), recently gave an interview to Ben Shapiro, editor-in-chief of The Daily Wire and an Orthodox Jew. Shapiro summarized the themes of their discussion on Twitter as follows:

.@BishopBarron joins me to discuss the best response to sex scandals in the Catholic Church, his possible concerns with the rise of Protestantism, and we seek to answer the age-old question: Who gets to go to heaven?

The embedded interview clip begins with Shapiro asking, “What’s the Catholic view on who gets into heaven and who doesn’t?” followed by an apparent list of reasons why he, an observant Jew and all-around decent guy, should be admitted:

“I feel like I lead a pretty good life, a very religiously based life in which I try to keep not just the Ten Commandments, but a solid 603 other commandments as well. And I spend an awful lot of my time promulgating what I would consider to be Judeo-Christian virtues, particularly in Western societies. So, what’s the Catholic view of me? Am I basically screwed here?”[1]

Note that Shapiro asked for “the Catholic view” of salvation. What he got from Bishop Barron, however, was something radically different:

“No. The Catholic view—go back to the Second Vatican Council [which] says it very clearly. I mean, Christ is the privileged route to salvation. ‘God so loved the world that He gave His only Son so that we may find eternal life’ [paraphrase of John 3:16], so that’s the privileged route. However, Vatican II clearly teaches that someone outside the explicit Christian faith can be saved. Now, they’re saved through the grace of Christ indirectly received, so I mean the grace is coming from Christ, but it might be received according to your conscience. So, if you’re following your conscience sincerely, or in your case, you’re following the commandments of the law [of Moses] sincerely, yeah, you can be saved.”

Thus ends the teaser clip, but in the full interview Bishop Barron goes on (17:27-18:08):

“Now, that doesn’t conduce to a complete relativism. We still would say that the privileged route, and the route that God has offered to humanity, is the route of His Son, but no, you can be saved. Even Vatican II says [that] an atheist of good will can be saved. Because in following his conscience, if he does—John Henry Newman said the conscience is ‘the aboriginal Vicar of Christ’ [Letter to the Duke of York, sect. 5] in the soul. That’s a very interesting characterization; that it is, in fact, the voice of Christ. If He’s the Logos made flesh [cf. John 1:14], right, He’s the divine Mind or Reason made flesh, then when I follow my conscience, I’m following Him, whether I know it explicitly or not. So even the atheist, Vatican II teaches, of good will can be saved.”

(Not sure how this last part squares, for example, with Hebrews 11:6: “But without faith it is impossible to please God. For he that cometh to God must believe that He is, and is a rewarder to them that seek Him.”)

What Would Saint Paul Say?

In the brief span of about a minute and 15 seconds, Bishop Barron managed to mangle the simple truth of salvation nearly beyond recognition. The chairman of the USCCB’s Committee on Evangelization and Catechesis said not a word about Original Sin, its consequences for human nature (including spiritual death and separation from God), our resultant need for a Savior, or the necessity of faith and Baptism in order to be saved (cf. Mark 16:16). Instead of exhorting his Jewish hearer with the words of St. Peter – “Do penance, and be baptized…in the Name of Jesus Christ, for the remission of your sins” (Acts 2:38) – Bishop Barron confirmed Shapiro in his error and gave him a false hope of being saved by “following his conscience” and keeping the law of Moses.[2]

What would St. Paul, the former Pharisee of Pharisees, have said in this situation? Let’s see:

“For we account a man to be justified by faith, without the works of the law.” (Rom. 3:28)

“But knowing that man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, we also believe in Christ Jesus, that we may be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: because by the works of the law no flesh shall be justified.” (Gal. 2:16)

“I cast not away the grace of God. For if justice be by the law, then Christ died in vain.” (Gal. 2:21)

“For by grace you are saved through faith: and that not of yourselves, for it is the gift of God. Not of works, that no man may glory.” (Eph. 2:8-9)

“But avoid foolish questions, and genealogies, and contentions, and strivings about the law. For they are unprofitable and vain.” (Tit. 3:9)

And as for Our Lord being “the privileged route to salvation,” this contradicts the very words of Christ Himself, Who said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No man cometh to the Father, but by Me” (John 14:6). He is not the “privileged” way; He is the only way! “Neither is there salvation in any other. For there is no other Name under heaven given to men, whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).

The Conciliar Culprit

From where, then, is Bishop Barron getting his “profane novelties” (1 Tim. 6:20), which contradict both Scripture and Tradition? The Second Vatican Council, he says, without citing a particular document, although I suspect he had in mind the following passage from Lumen Gentium, the Council’s “Dogmatic Constitution” on the Church (oddly classified, since it refrained from actually defining any dogma):

“Finally, those who have not yet received the Gospel are related in various ways to the people of God [cf. Summa Theologiae III, q. 8, art. 3, ad. 1]. In the first place we must recall the people to whom the testament and the promises were given and from whom Christ was born according to the flesh [cf. Rom. 9:4-5]. On account of their fathers this people remains most dear to God, for God does not repent of the gifts He makes nor of the calls He issues [cf. Rom. 11:28-29]. But the plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator. In the first place amongst these there are the Muslims, who, professing to hold the faith of Abraham, along with us adore the one and merciful God, Who on the last day will judge mankind.[3] Nor is God far distant from those who in shadows and images seek the unknown God, for it is He who gives to all men life and breath and all things [cf. Acts 17:25-28], and as Savior wills that all men be saved [cf. 1 Tim. 2:4]. Those also can attain to salvation who through no fault of their own do not know the Gospel of Christ or His Church, yet sincerely seek God and moved by grace strive by their deeds to do His will as it is known to them through the dictates of conscience [cf. Denz. 3869-3872]. Nor does Divine Providence deny the helps necessary for salvation to those who, without blame on their part, have not yet arrived at an explicit knowledge of God and with His grace strive to live a good life. Whatever good or truth is found amongst them is looked upon by the Church as a preparation for the Gospel.” (Lumen Gentium, art. 16)

Wrenching Aquinas Out of Context

This passage, like Bishop Barron’s explanation, is a deceptive mixture of truth and error. For starters, notice how St. Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae is cited as proof that “those who have not yet received the Gospel are related in various ways to the people of God.” The implication, of course, is that being “related” in some way “to the people of God” secures one’s salvation, but is that really what the Angelic Doctor taught? Here is the cited text of the Summa:

“Those who are unbaptized, though not actually in the Church, are in the Church potentially. And this potentiality is rooted in two things—first and principally, in the power of Christ, which is sufficient for the salvation of the whole human race; secondly, in free will.” (SummaIII, q. 8, art. 3, ad. 1)

Just prior to this statement, in the main body of his answer to the question, “Is [Christ] the Head of all men?” Aquinas lists the five ways by which souls are united to Christ the Head: 1) “by glory” (those in Heaven); 2) “by charity” (those baptized and in a state of grace); 3) “by faith” (those baptized yet in mortal sin); 4) by “potentiality, which is not yet reduced to act [i.e. not yet baptized], yet will be reduced to act according to Divine predestination”; and 5) by “potentiality, which will never be reduced to act [i.e. those who die without Baptism or the desire thereof]…”

“Potentiality,” Aquinas observed, “is rooted in…the power of Christ,” but also “in free will.” And while it is true that God desires “all men to be saved” (1 Tim. 2:4), it is equally true that not all men choose to cooperate and actually are saved – in particular, those who reject the “one Mediator of God and men, the Man Christ Jesus, Who gave Himself a redemption for all” (1 Tim. 2:5).

Ironically, Barron states later on during the interview, “Aquinas says that faith is the door of the spiritual life. Without faith, you can’t get into the spiritual life—that means a trust in the divine love.” Does he not see the contradiction on his part? In other words, if faith in Christ is absolutely necessary – and it certainly is (cf. John 3:18) – then why is he unwilling to point out that fact to Shapiro? And yet Barron refers to himself during the interview as an “evangelist”!

Does Invincible Ignorance Save?

Going back to Lumen Gentium, we also see that Denzinger’s Enchiridion is cited to justify the statement, “Those also can attain to salvation who through no fault of their own do not know the Gospel of Christ or His Church, yet sincerely seek God and moved by grace strive by their deeds to do His will as it is known to them through the dictates of conscience.” The passages in question (nn. 3869-3872 in post-1963 editions of Denzinger, typically identified as “D.S.”) provide the text of a letter of the Holy Office (Aug. 8, 1949) addressed to then-Archbishop Richard J. Cushing of Boston concerning the dogma extra Ecclesiam nulla salus (“outside the Church there is no salvation”). Here are the first two numbered passages:

“3869 In His infinite mercy God wills that the effects, necessary for one to be saved, of those helps to salvation that are directed toward man’s final end, not by intrinsic necessity, but only by divine institution [i.e. the sacraments], can also be obtained in certain circumstances when those helps are employed only through desire and longing. This we see clearly stated in the sacred Council of Trent, both in reference to the sacrament of regeneration and in reference to the sacrament of penance [cf. D.S. 1524, 1543].

3870 The same in its own degree must be asserted of the Church, insofar as she is the general help to salvation. Since, in order that one may obtain eternal salvation, it is not always required that one be incorporated into the Church actually as a member [through Baptism], but it is necessary that at least one be united to her by desire and longing.

However, this desire need not always be explicit, as it is in catechumens [i.e. those preparing for Baptism]; but when a person suffers from invincible ignorance, God accepts also an implicit desire, so called because it is included in that good disposition of soul whereby a person wishes his will to be conformed to the will of God.”[4]

Perhaps at face value, this seems to corroborate Barron’s claim about souls being “saved through the grace of Christ indirectly received,” but within the letter’s larger context, such is not the case. For example, in an earlier section of the letter (the reference to which was conveniently omitted from Lumen Gentium) we read:

“3867 Now, in the first place, the Church teaches that in this matter [of extra Ecclesiam nulla salus] there is no question of a most strict command of Jesus Christ. For He explicitly enjoined on His Apostles to teach all nations to observe everything that He Himself had commanded. Now, among the commandments of Christ, that one holds not the least place by which we are told to be incorporated by baptism into the Mystical Body of Christ, which is the Church, and to remain united to Christ and to His Vicar, through whom He Himself in a visible manner governs the Church on earth. Therefore, no one will be saved who, knowing the Church to have been divinely established by Christ, nevertheless refuses to submit to the Church or withholds obedience from the Roman Pontiff, the Vicar of Christ on earth.

3868 Not only did the Savior command that all nations should enter the Church [repeat: all nations – this includes Israel], but He also decreed the Church to be the means of salvation, without which no one can enter the kingdom of heavenly glory.”[5]

Moreover, the final cited passage clarifies:

“3872 Nor must it be thought that any kind of desire of entering the Church suffices for one to be saved. It is necessary that the desire by which one is related to the Church be animated by perfect charity [i.e. selfless love of God and neighbor]. The implicit desire can produce no effect unless a person has supernatural faith.”[6] (Emphasis added)

Considering that Shapiro prefaced his initial question about salvation with the statement, “I don’t really care about this question particularly much,” he certainly does not appear to meet the criteria.

The Rest of the Interview

After watching the teaser clip on Twitter (the primary focus of our investigation up to this point), I decided it would only be fair to watch the entire interview and see if Bishop Barron perhaps redeemed his erroneous statements on salvation. Sadly, he did not. In fact, throughout the remainder of the interview he compounded the problem by spouting further errors on various subjects, for example:

When asked if he thinks the Church has ever failed in her role as “the general help to salvation” (D.S. 3870), Barron referred to the Latin dictum Ecclesia semper reformanda est (“the Church is always in need of reform”) and said that “when Luther picked that up as a great reformer, that’s a Catholic principle” (29:08-29:32).

Perhaps Bishop Barron should (re)read Pope Leo X’s condemnation of Luther’s errors (Exsurge Domine), and of Luther himself (Decet Romanum Pontificem), and reconsider his gross mischaracterization of the arch-heresiarch.

When Shapiro asked, “How does Catholicism make room for other religions…?” followed by, “Is the rise of Protestantism seen by Catholicism as a bad thing…?” Barron responded: “To the degree that modernity, as we know it politically, emerged out of Protestantism—which I think it did in many ways, many important ways—the Church has found an awful lot of good within modernity and doesn’t advocate now, certainly, this sort of ‘altar-throne’ relationship sort of thing. We don’t advocate, you know, taking over the government and the Church running political affairs. There’s a legitimate independence, a legitimate integrity to the political reality, so the Church wouldn’t want that by any means. To that degree, I think it embraces very much the modern sense of pluralism and a certain separation between the Church’s preoccupation and that of politics…” (31:08-32:10).

Clearly, Barron subscribes to the same view as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who wrote in the 1980’s that Vatican II’s Gaudium et Spes (Constitution on the Church in the Modern World) “serves as a countersyllabus [opposing Pius IX’s Syllabus of Errors] and, as such, represents, on the part of the Church, an attempt at an official reconciliation with the new era inaugurated in 1789.”[7] Where, exactly, does the Social Kingship of Christ fit into this “modern”(ist) paradigm?

When asked to compare/contrast Popes John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Francis, Barron characterized the latter as “a prophetic-type voice, so he’s critical. He does what the prophets often do. He criticizes what he takes to be all these excesses within the capitalist system. He’s not so much a constructive thinker there, like what’s he proposing as the way forward. He’s in, you know, this sort of ‘Jeremiah mode’, I think, of putting his finger on excesses” (34:20-35:11).

No commentary necessary (and no, this is not satire).

The Last Straw – Old Covenant “Has Permanent Validity”

And finally, during the last 10 minutes or so of the interview, the discussion came full circle. Shapiro asked, “What do you think are the significant philosophical differences…between Judaism and Catholicism?” Instead of answering directly, Barron focused his reply on his conviction that “it’s the ‘re-Judaizing’ of Catholicism that is evangelically so important. Precisely when you divorce Catholicism from Judaism, you get these distortions of Jesus so common today: Jesus as ‘teacher of timeless spiritual truth,’ Jesus as guru, Jesus as Gnostic, you know, ‘master.’”

Barron went on to emphasize that “Jesus is, as Paul said, the ‘Yes’ to all the promises made to Israel,” paraphrasing 2 Corinthians 1:20. Indeed He is, but instead of using this truth as a springboard for calling Shapiro to conversion, Barron said:

“I want to ‘re-Judaize’ Catholicism. Because, you see, the thing is, in many parts of the Protestant movement, there’s a desire to ‘de-Judaize’ the operation, right, that we’ve overcome that and we kind of left that behind. Catholicism lifts it up. It doesn’t want to leave it [Judaism] behind. That’s why the permanence of the covenant made to Israel is so important to us. This covenant’s not been violated. God can’t say no to the great covenant He made. It has permanent validity.” (49:00-49:28, emphasis added)

Shapiro wasted no time capitalizing on a golden opportunity. He immediately brought up what he calls “replacement theology” – “the idea that the Jews had sort of been left behind and that the New Covenant had been made” – and asked Barron, “What does the Catholic Church think of the idea that the Jews have sort of been superseded in history?” Barron replied, “Yeah, no, we’re against supersecessionism.”

I was not surprised to hear him utter those words – again, based on Vatican II[8] – but they are nonetheless offensive to pious ears, not to mention contrary to the Word of God (Old and New Testament, alike):

“Behold the days shall come, saith the Lord, and I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Juda: Not according to the covenant which I made with their fathers, in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt: the covenant which they made void, and I had dominion over them, saith the Lord. But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel, after those days, saith the Lord: I will give My law in their bowels, and I will write it in their heart: and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.” (Jer. 31:31-33; cf. Heb. 8:6-12)

“Not that we are sufficient to think anything of ourselves, as of ourselves: but our sufficiency is from God. Who also hath made us fit ministers of the new testament, not in the letter, but in the spirit. For the letter killeth, but the spirit quickeneth. Now if the ministration of death, engraven with letters upon stones, was glorious; so that the children of Israel could not steadfastly behold the face of Moses, for the glory of his countenance, which is made void: How shall not the ministration of the spirit be rather in glory?” (2 Cor. 3:5-8)

“Now in saying a new [covenant] [cf. Jer. 31], He hath made the former old.[9] And that which decayeth and groweth old, is near its end.” (Heb. 8:13)

“And therefore He [Jesus] is the Mediator of the new testament: that by means of His death for the redemption of those transgressions which were under the former testament, they that are called may receive the promise of eternal inheritance.” (Heb. 9:15)

Conclusion – Barron Failed to Evangelize

While much more could be said about this embarrassing episode, the bottom line is this: Bishop Robert Barron, a successor of the Apostles who is internationally known for his evangelization efforts, failed to evangelize Ben Shapiro. He had a prime opportunity to reach a notable “lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matt. 10:6), but instead he spent much of the discussion focusing on the “deep congruence” of Judaism and Christianity.

In the last segment of the interview (50:48-55:16), Shapiro even raised the question of what is lacking in Judaism (according to Christians) that only Jesus could fulfill, making reference to sin and the need for atonement (“very often I hear that man is a sinful creature and that we need Jesus in order to take on our sins”). How difficult would it have been for Bishop Barron to say, for example:

You’re exactly right, Ben. Because of the Fall of Adam and Eve, man is a sinful creature and in absolute need of a Savior, One Who is capable of repaying the infinite debt of love and reparation for sin that we owe to God. Yet who but God Himself could repay this debt? That is why we need Jesus, because He is Emmanuel (“God with us”), the promised Son born of a Virgin (cf. Isa. 7:14; Matt. 1:20-23) and the prophesied Suffering Servant Who “was wounded for our iniquities, He was bruised for our sins: the chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and by His bruises we are healed” (Isa. 53:5).

If Ben Shapiro ends up losing his soul (God forbid), Bishop Barron will no doubt be called to a strict account by Our Lord for failing to speak “the truth in charity” (Eph. 4:15) when he had the chance.

UPDATE: As a friend reminded me after reading my article, Bishop Barron is a devotee of the infamous Hans Urs von Balthasar (1908-1988), the Swiss Jesuit and advocate of the Nouvelle Théologie (“New Theology”), which was rightly identified as a return to Modernism by the renowned Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P. in the mid-1940’s and censured by Pope Pius XII (e.g. Encyclical Humani Generis).

Balthasar published a work shortly before his death entitled Dare We Hope “That All Men Be Saved”? in which he claimed it is legitimate to believe that hell is empty of human souls and shall never be occupied by them (tell that to the three shepherd children of Fatima, who were shown otherwise by Our Lady herself on July 13, 1917). In 2014, Ignatius Press published their second English edition of Balthasar’s book with a foreword by none other than Fr. Robert Barron. Therein, Barron claims it “is so much nonsense” to say that belief in so-called “universal salvation” is detrimental to the Church’s missionary zeal. His own lack of zeal to evangelize Ben Shapiro, however, suggests otherwise.

Notes

[1] The short answer, of course, is yes, unless he converts: “If anyone says that, without divine grace through Jesus Christ, man can be justified before God by his own works, whether they be done by his own natural powers or through the teaching of the law: let him be anathema.” – Council of Trent (1545-1563), Canons on Justification, Can. 1 (Denz. 811; D.S. 1551).

[2] Here is what the Church actually teaches about keeping the Mosaic law in light of the New Covenant: “[The Holy Roman Church] firmly believes, professes, and teaches that the legal prescriptions of the Old Testament or the Mosaic law, which are divided into ceremonies, holy sacrifices, and sacraments, because they were instituted to signify something in the future, although they were adequate for the divine cult of that age, once our Lord Jesus Christ Who was signified by them had come, came to an end and the sacraments of the New Testament had their beginning. Whoever, even after the Passion, places his hope in the legal prescriptions and submits himself to them as necessary for salvation, as if faith in Christ without them could not save, sins mortally. She does not deny that from Christ’s Passion until the promulgation of the Gospel they could have been retained, provided they were in no way believed to be necessary for salvation. But she asserts that after the promulgation of the Gospel they cannot be observed without the loss of eternal salvation.” – Council of Florence (1431-1445), Bull Cantate Domino (Decree for the Jacobites, emphasis added) (Denz. 712; D.S. 1348)

[4] Heinrich Denzinger, Enchiridion Symbolorum, 43rd Latin-English edition (ed. Peter Hünermann) (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2012), p. 796. At the risk of stating the obvious, the “good disposition” mentioned in Denz. 3870 clearly excludes atheists, who by definition are not “of good will” because they deny the existence of God so evident in creation, which St. Paul says is “inexcusable” (Rom. 1:20).

[8] Nearly half of the Conciliar Declaration Nostra Aetate (On the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions) is devoted to eulogizing “the bond that spiritually ties the people of the New Covenant to Abraham's stock” (NA, art. 4) and emphasizing, “Although the Church is the new people of God, the Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God, as if this followed from the Holy Scriptures” (ibid.). This document no doubt led John Paul II to make his infamous reference to “the people of God of the Old Covenant, never denounced by God” (in Italian, “il popolo di Dio dell'Antica Alleanza, da Dio mai denunziata”) (Nov. 17, 1980 in Mainz, Germany). And Pope Francis repeated the same in Evangelii Gaudium (n. 247): “We hold the Jewish people in special regard because their covenant with God has never been revoked, for ‘the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable’ (Rom. 11:29).”

[9] The Greek word used is παλαιούμενον (palaioúmenon), from the root παλαιόω (palaióō), which means “to make (passively, become) worn out, or declare obsolete” (Strong’s Definitions).

]]>Saved by “Conscience”? The Gospel According to BarronWhen Mercy and Justice Got Divorced: The Inauthentic Franciscan Magisterium of Off-the-Cuff CommentsCFN BlogBrian McCallBrian McCallWed, 19 Dec 2018 17:00:00 +0000https://www.catholicfamilynews.org/blog/2018/12/19/when-mercy-and-justice-got-divorced-the-inauthentic-franciscan-magisterium-of-off-the-cuff-comments59f88a70bce176951da623c1:59f88b47ec212d7d776a7d73:5c1975a84d7a9c3f61d0209dPope Francis is at it again. One of his favorite pastimes seems to be taking potshots at anyone who diverges from the “gospel according to Bergoglio,” be that young people who love the Traditional Mass, Cardinals Burke or Sarah, or Archbishop Vigano. This time, it was not traditionalist or conservative-leaning clergy or laity of our time but all of his predecessors for centuries.

In a meeting with the International Commission against the Death Penalty, on December 17, Francis cast aside his prepared speech and instead decided to ad lib a few off-the-cuff remarks. Every saint of the Church must tremble in their grave every time the current pope decides to ad lib comments as one never knows what bizarre things will follow (“Who am I to Judge?”, “Mary was angry with God at the crucifixion”, etc.). According to a report at LifeSiteNews, the Pope’s impromptu remarks this time included a tongue lashing of the popes “in centuries past” who permitted the use of capital punishment, even in lands controlled by the Vatican (the Papal States).

Not only does the “Pope of mercy” have harsh words of condemnation for Catholics today who refuse to follow him into error and novelty, but he even berates every single one of his predecessors “in centuries past” for allowing this “inhuman form of punishment . . . ignoring the primacy of mercy over justice.” He blames these supposedly wayward popes in condoning the death penalty on “an insufficiently developed understanding of human dignity.” Even John Paul II, who was certainly squeamish about capital punishment, did not agree with Francis and is therefore also a target in Francis’ latest attack.

But if Francis is condemning his predecessors for being ignorant of the new doctrine of Bergoglio and allowing the death penalty, then Francis is blasphemously chastising God Himself in his condemnation of those who “in centuries past” tolerated the death penalty. Many times, the Bible recounts that God inflicted the death penalty on offenders (e.g. 1 Sam. [Kings] 6:19: “But He slew of the men of Bethsames, because they had seen the ark of the Lord: and He slew of the people seventy men, and fifty thousand of the common people. And the people lamented, because the Lord had smitten the people with a great slaughter.” God Himself, as well as every other pope before Bergoglio, had, according to Francis, “an insufficiently developed understanding of human dignity” since they admitted the death penalty (at least in theory).

Think about the hubris of this claim for just a moment: every pope before Francis (e.g. St. Peter, St. Gregory the Great, St. Pius V, St. Pius X) had “an insufficiently developed understanding of human dignity,” until Francis came along to enlighten them all.

Contrary to this false gospel, God has revealed that the death penalty is both admissible and compatible with the human dignity He created (a dignity He understands infinitely more than Francis) for certain offenses (e.g. Gen. 9:6, 38:24; Ex. 21:17; and 1 Sam. [Kings] 15:3, in which God says to King Saul through the Prophet Samuel: “Now therefore go, and smite Amalec, and utterly destroy all that he hath: spare him not, nor covet anything that is his: but slay both man and woman, child and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.”). Too bad Francis wasn’t there to deliver some off-the-cuff corrections to King Saul, encouraging him to disregard the command of God in the name of human dignity. Perhaps after he “corrects” the Catechism to remove capital punishment, Francis will have to “correct” the Bible to update these and other verses.

In addition to the absurdity of his latest attack, there are two serious errors in his rash comments. These errors demonstrate that the Jesuit Pope does not understand basic principles of philosophy, jurisprudence, or history.

Beyond slandering his predecessors (and God Himself, by extension) as having “an insufficiently developed understanding of human dignity” (truly outrageous), he also erroneously claims that the reason for allowing the death penalty for so many centuries was an “inability to protect society.” This is not now, nor has it ever been, the purpose of capital punishment. The primary reason for the death penalty is to satisfy the requirements of justice, specifically, retributive justice. Retributive justice, which is a species of commutative justice, requires that one who commits an injustice and thereby takes something unequally from another person or society as a whole owes a debt to return the balance to the exchange. For the most severe of crimes, the equity in exchange for the harm caused requires the forfeiture of life. Satisfying the debt of retributive justice was held to be the primary end “in past centuries” of the death penalty, not some imagined inability to protect society. (Given that we live in a time with the highest rates of violent crime in centuries, it would seem our predecessors knew more than we about how to protect society.) The protection of society and possible reform of the perpetrator were only secondary ends of the death penalty, not the primary ones.

Beyond the bad history Bergoglio learned in his Jesuit schools, he also exhibits a gross lack of philosophical understanding. Mercy is not over justice, in the sense of trumping justice. Catholic philosophy and theology understand that mercy and justice are both indispensable and must be held in balance with each other. As St. Thomas succinctly explained: “Mercy without justice is the mother of dissolution; [and] justice without mercy is cruelty.”[1] Mercy is a great virtue (although not superior to charity, as St. Thomas explains), but it must be held in balance with justice. The ancient philosophers debated whether mercy is over or under justice (again, too bad Bergoglio wasn’t around in ancient Greece to set them straight), but the Christian synthesis demonstrated that the entire question was flawed. We need both justice tempered by mercy and mercy regulated by justice.

In his Summa, St. Thomas distinguishes between two types of mercy, one false and the other true (take a guess as to which one describes Francis’ understanding). In response to the question of whether mercy is a virtue, St. Thomas says:

Mercy signifies grief for another's distress. Now this grief may denote, in one way, a movement of the sensitive appetite, in which case mercy is not a virtue but a passion; whereas, in another way, it may denote a movement of the intellective appetite, in as much as one person's evil is displeasing to another. This movement may be ruled in accordance with reason, and in accordance with this movement regulated by reason, the movement of the lower appetite may be regulated. Hence Augustine says (De Civ. Dei ix, 5) that "this movement of the mind" (viz. mercy) "obeys the reason, when mercy is vouchsafed in such a way that justice is safeguarded, whether we give to the needy or forgive the repentant." And since it is essential to human virtue that the movements of the soul should be regulated by reason, as was shown above (I-II:59:4 and I-II:59:5), it follows that mercy is a virtue.[2]

Mercy which is not regulated by reason (i.e. does not safeguard justice) is not the virtue of mercy but merely an unregulated, sentimental passion that undermines justice. St. Thomas’ clear distinction speaks directly to Pope Francis, who shows that he understands mercy merely as some sentimental feeling of the lower passions that rejects being regulated by reason in accord with justice. By flagrantly rejecting and insulting his predecessors in these informal remarks, he shows that he has merely a sentimental, visceral reaction against a serious punishment which, when used justly, has not only been commanded by God but is in accord with reason. Even John Paul II, who seemed to share such an emotional understanding of mercy, allowed a scintilla of reason to prevent him from irrationally declaring the death penalty “inadmissible” in all cases.

Rather than speaking off the cuff on subjects that demonstrate his lack of proper Catholic education in history and philosophy, perhaps Pope Francis should read the divinely inspired Psalms that testify to the Christian synthesis of justice and mercy, rather than holding mercy as an emotional trump card over justice. If he did so, he would find that, “Mercy and truth have met each other: justice and peace have kissed” (Ps. 84:11).

]]>When Mercy and Justice Got Divorced: The Inauthentic Franciscan Magisterium of Off-the-Cuff CommentsDespite Papal Fiat, Death Penalty Remains LicitCFN BlogMatt GaspersMatt GaspersWed, 19 Dec 2018 00:34:05 +0000https://www.catholicfamilynews.org/blog/2018/12/18/despite-papal-fiat-death-penalty-remains-licit59f88a70bce176951da623c1:59f88b47ec212d7d776a7d73:5c198d06562fa705839b6509Editor’s Note: The following article first appeared in the Sept. 2018 print edition of Catholic Family News (click HERE to subscribe; current subscribers can access the E-Edition HERE). In light of Pope Francis’ latest comments against capital punishment, going so far as to implicitly deride all of his predecessors in the Papacy for tolerating it, we reprint this article as it provides a thorough summary of the reasons why the death penalty remains morally licit.

*****

At the beginning of August, just days after accepting Theodore McCarrick’s resignation from the College of Cardinals (following his long-overdue exposure as a sodomite sexual predator), Pope Francis once again made international headlines by announcing his decision to “revise” the post-conciliar Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) concerning capital punishment. According to the new version of para. 2267, “the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person” and the Church “works with determination for its abolition worldwide.”

Tellingly, this “revision” cites but a single source to “prove” its validity: a speech that Francis himself delivered in October of last year. And yet, in a companion letter addressed to the world’s bishops, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) would have us believe that “the new formulation of number 2267 of the Catechism expresses an authentic development of doctrine that is not in contradiction with the prior teachings of the Magisterium.” This is truly an absurd claim, considering that capital punishment is explicitly sanctioned throughout Sacred Scripture (e.g. Gen. 9:5-6; Rom. 13:1-4) and has been constantly affirmed as licit – even necessary, at times – by the Fathers, Doctors, and Popes throughout Church history. As Dr. Peter Kwasniewski summed it up in two consecutivecolumns for LifeSiteNews following the announcement, “Pope’s change to Catechism contradicts natural law and the deposit of Faith” and, “Pope’s change to Catechism is not just a prudential judgment, but a rejection of dogma”.

Answering Objections to the Death Penalty

The legitimacy of capital punishment is part of the Church’s ordinary and universal Magisterium. This means that although it has not been solemnly defined as a dogma by a pope or ecumenical council (as, for example, the sacrificial nature of the Mass at Trent, or Our Lady’s Immaculate Conception by Pius IX), it is nevertheless a constant teaching of the Church (rooted in Scripture, Tradition, and natural law) and is therefore unchangeable.

For the sake of argument, however, and to refute the novel opinion that Francis is attempting to impose on the Church, let us consider the reasons why the death penalty is not only permissible but morally good and even necessary. Our demonstration will proceed by way of answering the common objections to capital punishment as articulated by Pope John Paul II in his 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae (EV):

“On this matter there is a growing tendency, both in the Church and in civil society, to demand that [capital punishment] be applied in a very limited way or even that it be abolished completely. The problem must be viewed in the context of a system of penal justice ever more in line with human dignity and thus, in the end, with God's plan for man and society. The primary purpose of the punishment which society inflicts is ‘to redress the disorder caused by the offence’ [CCC, 2266]. Public authority must redress the violation of personal and social rights by imposing on the offender an adequate punishment for the crime, as a condition for the offender to regain the exercise of his or her freedom. In this way authority also fulfils the purpose of defending public order and ensuring people's safety, while at the same time offering the offender an incentive and help to change his or her behavior and be rehabilitated. [cf. ibid.]

It is clear that, for these purposes to be achieved, the nature and extent of the punishment must be carefully evaluated and decided upon, and ought not go to the extreme of executing the offender except in cases of absolute necessity: in other words, when it would not be possible otherwise to defend society. Today, however, as a result of steady improvements in the organization of the penal system, such cases are very rare, if not practically non-existent.

In any event, the principle set forth in the new Catechism of the Catholic Church remains valid: ‘If bloodless means are sufficient to defend human lives against an aggressor and to protect public order and the safety of persons, public authority must limit itself to such means, because they better correspond to the concrete conditions of the common good and are more in conformity to the dignity of the human person’ [CCC, 2267 – old version].” (EV, n. 56, emphasis added)

Based on this excerpt, we can identify four basic objections:

There is a “growing tendency” to oppose capital punishment and “demand” its abolition.

It supposedly violates “human dignity” to end the life of a convicted criminal.

It is unnecessary in light of modern prisons, that is, the ability of developed countries (note the qualifier) to offer life imprisonment for dangerous criminals.

It removes the possibility of criminals being “rehabilitated” in order to “regain the exercise of his or her freedom.”

As we shall see, these objections, which fall under the category of prudential judgment (i.e. subject to error), do not stand up under scrutiny.

A Growing Tendency Against Justice

The first argument against capital punishment mentioned by John Paul II concerns “a growing tendency, both in the Church and in civil society, to demand that it be applied in a very limited way or even that it be abolished completely.” This argument seems to be rooted in the belief that popular opinion is somehow a barometer of right and wrong and should guide public policy. An appropriate Catholic response to this notion is: Since when does popular opinion dictate Church teaching or practice? Since when is the Church a democracy? And more fundamentally, since when is truth subject to the will of the majority?[1]

The Church, not “the people”, is “the pillar and ground of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15). And the Church, as mentioned above, has constantly affirmed that capital punishment is morally licit. It could not be otherwise, considering that God Himself is the Author of the death penalty, both as the general consequence for Original Sin (cf. Gen. 2:15-17, 3:1-3) and as the particular punishment for certain heinous crimes, including child sacrifice, adultery, incest, sodomy, bestiality, sorcery, and murder (cf. Lev. 20). Specifically concerning murder, God Himself explained in the days of Noah – many centuries prior to the Mosaic law – His reason for demanding death as the only fitting punishment for killing the innocent:

“For I will require the blood of your lives at the hand of every beast, and at the hand of man, at the hand of every man, and of his brother, will I require the life of man. Whosoever shall shed man's blood, his blood shall be shed: for man was made to the image of God.” (Gen. 9:5-6)

For those who might argue that Christ did away with capital punishment, for example, by His words to the Pharisees concerning the woman caught in adultery – “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her” (John 8:7) – Fr. John Hardon, S.J. explains:

“Christian dispensation made no essential change in this respect, as St. Paul expressly says: ‘The state is there to serve God for your benefit. If you break the law, however, you may well have fear: the bearing of the sword has its significance’ (Romans 13:4). Among the errors of the Waldenses condemned by the Church in the early thirteenth century was the proposition that denied the lawfulness of capital punishment (Argentré, Collectio de Novis Erroribus, I, 86).”[2]

Human Dignity Violated – By the Crime, Not the Punishment

Next, we move on to the objection that capital punishment supposedly violates the “human dignity” of the criminal. First of all, what about the dignity of those who have been murdered or suffered other forms of heinous abuse? Is it not the duty of the State to punish evildoers as a matter of justice? St. Paul gives us the answer in Romans 13, a verse of which was quoted by Fr. Hardon:

“Let every soul be subject to higher powers: for there is no power but from God: and those that are, are ordained of God. Therefore, he that resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God. And they that resist purchase to themselves damnation. For princes are not a terror to the good work, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? Do that which is good: and thou shalt have praise from the same. For he is God's minister to thee, for good. But if thou do that which is evil, fear: for he beareth not the sword in vain. For he is God's minister: an avenger to execute wrath upon him that doth evil.” (Rom. 13:1-4, emphasis added)

And why is the ruler supposed to avenge capital crimes with “the sword”? Precisely because of human dignity and the violation of that dignity by those who commit murder: “Whosoever shall shed man's blood, his blood shall be shed: for man was made to the image of God” (Gen. 9:6). This is why God insists upon death as the only just punishment for taking the life of an innocent person. After all, if the punishment is supposed to fit the crime, as John Paul II himself admitted in EV (“Public authority must” impose “an adequate punishment for the crime”), then what other punishment could possible suffice for murder?

Thus, we see that the governing authority has not only the right but the duty to “execute wrath” upon evildoers, both to uphold human dignity and to demonstrate to society at large that those in authority take crime and punishment seriously. Without such just retribution, lawlessness will abound and human dignity will be further threatened. The Roman Catechism stresses this point within the context of the Fifth Commandment:

“Another kind of lawful slaying belongs to the civil authorities, to whom is entrusted power of life and death, by the legal and judicious exercise of which they punish the guilty and protect the innocent. The just use of this power, far from involving the crime of murder, is an act of paramount obedience to this Commandment which prohibits murder. The end [i.e. purpose] of the Commandment is the preservation and security of human life. Now the punishments inflicted by the civil authority, which is the legitimate avenger of crime, naturally tend to this end, since they give security to life by repressing outrage and violence.”[3] (Emphasis added)

Regarding “the inviolability of human life” and “the dignity of the human person” (mentioned throughout EV, as well as in Francis’ “revision” of CCC para. 2267), St. Thomas Aquinas does not share the opinion that one’s dignity (and, therefore, one’s life) can never be forfeited. Consider what the Angelic Doctor says while considering the question, “Is it lawful to kill sinners?”:

“By sinning man departs from the order of reason, and consequently falls away from the dignity of his manhood, in so far as he is naturally free, and exists for himself, and he falls into the slavish state of the beasts, by being disposed of according as he is useful to others. This is expressed in Psalm 48:21: ‘Man, when he was in honor, did not understand; he hath been compared to senseless beasts, and made like to them,’ and Proverbs 11:29: ‘The fool shall serve the wise.’ Hence, although it be evil in itself to kill a man so long as he preserves his dignity, yet it may be good to kill a man who has sinned, even as it is to kill a beast. For a bad man is worse than a beast, and is more harmful, as the Philosopher states (Polit. i, 1 and Ethic. vii, 6).” (Summa Theologiae, II-II, q. 64, art. 2, emphasis added)

While St. Thomas insists that vigilantism in response to crime is itself a crime, he ultimately affirms the moral liceity of capital punishment by lawful authorities:

“…it is lawful to kill an evildoer in so far as it is directed to the welfare of the whole community, so that it belongs to him alone who has charge of the community's welfare. Thus it belongs to a physician to cut off a decayed limb, when he has been entrusted with the care of the health of the whole body. Now the care of the common good is entrusted to persons of rank having public authority: wherefore they alone, and not private individuals, can lawfully put evildoers to death.” (Ibid., art. 3, emphasis added)

Life Imprisonment – A Viable Option Worldwide?

This brings us to Objection #3, that capital punishment is unnecessary in light of modern prisons. John Paul II argued in EV, “Modern society in fact has the means of effectively suppressing crime by rendering criminals harmless without definitively denying them the chance to reform” (n. 27), and the CDF’s recent letter explaining Francis’ “revision” of CCC quotes this text.

Two questions immediately come to mind: 1) Is it fair to force law-abiding citizens to foot the bill for the life imprisonment of anti-social and unrepentant criminals? And 2) does every “modern society” (i.e. nation on earth) truly have the ability to contain all persons found guilty of violent crimes?

The reasonable answer to both questions certainly seems to be a resounding “No.” Once again, the most fundamental purpose of punishment is just retribution for evildoing, not containment of those who pose a threat to society. John Paul II admitted as much in EV when he stated, “The primary purpose of the punishment which society inflicts is ‘to redress the disorder caused by the offence’ [CCC, 2266].” Perhaps the most compelling testimony in this regard is that of St. Dismas, more commonly known as “the Good Thief,” who rebuked his fellow criminal for taunting Our Lord while all three hung on crosses, saying: “Neither dost thou fear God, seeing thou art condemned under the same condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we receive the due reward of our deeds; but this Man hath done no evil” (Luke 23:40-41).

To say that those guilty of capital crimes – especially murder – have just as much a “right to life” as those who are innocent is a complete perversion of justice. God commanded the Israelites, “The innocent and just person thou shalt not put to death: because I abhor the wicked” (Ex. 23:7). This is simply common sense.

A secondary purpose for capital punishment (after retribution) is, of course, “the community’s welfare,” as St. Thomas teaches. Regarding said welfare, can anyone honestly guarantee that every society on earth – including the poorest and most unstable – has the ability to contain violent criminals for life? While I am certainly not an expert on the world’s prison systems, such a guarantee would seem quite dubious at best. And barring such a guarantee, does Pope Francis still consider it “inadmissible” for lawful authorities in lesser developed nations to execute convicted murderers when they cannot feasibly protect the common good by other means? (Why are there no cardinals or bishops publicly asking this basic question?)

True Rehabilitation, True Freedom

The fourth and final objection, as outlined above, is that the death penalty removes the possibility of rehabilitation and regaining of freedom for criminals. In a worldly sense, this is true: Capital punishment is permanent.[4] It is the definitive removal of all temporal good from the guilty party, not only for the sake of justice, but in hopes that being faced with the Four Last Things – Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell – will bring about the only “rehabilitation” that really matters: conversion. Once again, St. Dismas is the prime example: “Lord, remember me when Thou shalt come into Thy kingdom. And Jesus said to him: Amen I say to thee, this day thou shalt be with Me in paradise” (Luke 23:42-43).

Temporal punishment for sin is a reality we must all face, not because God enjoys making us suffer, but because He knows that suffering is often the only means that will bring souls to repentance, conversion, and sanctity. Part of this reality is accepting the fact that abusing our God-given free will has consequences, both internal and external. Our Lord tells us plainly that sin leads to slavery (cf. John 8:34), and St. Paul, that “the wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23). However, by humbly submitting to temporal punishments, we can experience real freedom from sin and escape eternal punishment in “the pool burning with fire and brimstone, which is the second death” (Apoc. 21:8).

Conclusion – A Connection to Amoris Laetitia

In my initial coverage of the now-infamous Catechism “revision”, I noted that Pope Francis seems to be getting more brazen in “pushing the envelope” when it comes to heresy. While writing the present article, it occurred to me that I should revisit the theological critique of Amoris Laetitia (made public in late July of 2016) and see how the “inadmissibility” of capital punishment measures up to the censured propositions listed in the critique. Lo and behold, I discovered something I had apparently forgotten: the very first censure is leveled against the proposition, “The Church…firmly rejects the death penalty.”

This erroneous assertion is found in n. 83 of AL and is actually a quote from the Relatio Finalis (final report) of the 2015 Synod on the Family. Looking at the full sentence in the Relatio, we read:

“Similarly, the Church not only feels the urgency to assert the right to a natural death, without aggressive treatment and euthanasia, but also takes care of the elderly, protects people with special needs, assists the terminally ill, comforts the dying and firmly rejects the death penalty (cf. CCC, 2258).” (n. 64)

Notice that para. 2258 of the JPII Catechism is cited as justification for the proposition. The problem is that this passage has nothing to do with capital punishment:

“Human life is sacred because from its beginning it involves the creative action of God and it remains for ever in a special relationship with the Creator, who is its sole end. God alone is the Lord of life from its beginning until its end: no one can under any circumstance claim for himself the right directly to destroy an innocent human being.” (CCC, para. 2258, emphasis added)

“Innocent human being,” not “convicted murdered.” And furthermore, the above passage is entirely a quote from the 1987 CDF instruction Donum Vitae, a document which addresses issues related specifically and exclusively to procreation.

This is trickery, plan and simple, and it serves as a good reminder that we cannot simply “take their word for it” that a given teaching is legitimate because it has a footnote. We must do our homework, check references, and refuse to go along with any of the “profane novelties” (1 Tim. 6:20) currently emanating from “evil men and seducers” who are “erring, and driving into error” (2 Tim. 3:13).

Notes

[1] Interestingly, God Himself addresses the error of “majority rule” as follows: “Thou shalt not follow the multitude to do evil: neither shalt thou yield in judgment, to the opinion of the most part, to stray from the truth” (Ex. 23:2).

[3]Catechism of the Council of Trent (Rockford: TAN Books and Publishers, Inc., 1982), Part III (The Decalogue), Fifth Commandment, p. 421.

[4] As such, one would think that its lawful and timely usage would be a significant deterrent, which is in fact the case, according to scholarly studies on the subject (e.g. “Death Penalty Deters Murders, Studies Say”). Honestly, it is sad that we a scientific study in order to “prove” such a common-sense truth.

]]>Despite Papal Fiat, Death Penalty Remains LicitCatholic Family News 2019 Conference Room Reservations OpenCFN ConferenceCFN BlogBrian McCallTue, 18 Dec 2018 18:29:00 +0000https://www.catholicfamilynews.org/blog/2018/12/18/catholic-family-news-2019-conference-room-reservations-open59f88a70bce176951da623c1:59f88b47ec212d7d776a7d73:5c1936ef4d7a9c30afe8f510Catholic Family News is happy to announce rooms can now be reserved at a reduced conference rate for the length of the 2019 Conference, May 3-5. This year’s theme is Fifty Years of Problems with the New Mass. For more information on the conference including the list of speakers and topics and how to by conference tickets click here.

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Third Week of Advent

Editor’s Note: While today’s meditation from Divine Intimacy addresses "consecrated souls” (i.e. those in religious life) in particular, the general principles outlined certainly apply to all the faithful – and all the more so in our age of incessant noise and chatter, especially via social media. May this reflection help us all to imitate Our Lady, who spent countless hours silently contemplating and adoring the Incarnate Word, Whose blessed Nativity we are preparing to celebrate with her. “But Mary kept all these words, pondering them in her heart” (Luke 2:19).

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By Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen, O.C.D.

1) Holy Scripture says, “In the multitude of words there shall not want sin. […] He that hath no guard on his speech shall meet with evils” (Prov. 10:19, 13:3). The rule of life of a consecrated soul, even if she lives in the world, should always provide for the practice of silence; and if, because of the demands of her duties, it is absolutely impossible for her to observe fixed times for silence, it is indispensable that she hold fast to this principle: to speak as little as possible with creatures in order to be able to speak as much as possible with God. She must, therefore, accustom herself to keeping control over her words, thus avoiding loquaciousness, idle chatter, prolonged conversations, and excessive exchange of confidences. The same norm which governs the use of the senses governs also the use of speech—it is to be used only in the measure required by duty or charity. Of course, it is certainly licit to talk for the purpose of taking some just alleviation or recreation, but always with moderation and within reasonable limits.

However, it is not enough to observe exterior silence; we must also strive for interior silence, that is, silence of the interior senses—the memory, imagination, sensitive feelings, thoughts, recollections of the past and useless conjectures about the future.

“If any man think himself to be religious, not bridling his tongue … this man’s religion is vain” (Jam. 1:26), which is to be understood, says St. John of the Cross, “no less of inward speech than of outward.”

2) God Himself says to the soul desirous of divine intimacy, “Hearken, O daughter, and see, and incline thy ear, and forget thy people and thy father’s house” (Ps. 44:11). Sister Elizabeth of the Trinity makes the following comment on this verse: “In order to listen we must forget our ‘father’s house’; that means, whatever pertains to the natural life. … To forget our ‘people’ seems to me more difficult; for by ‘people’ is meant that world which forms, as it were, part of ourselves. It includes our feelings, memories, impressions, and so forth. In a word, it is self. We must forget it, give it up, and when the soul has broken with it, and is wholly delivered from all it means, [then] ‘the King greatly desires its beauty.’”

The beauty of a recollected soul is the unity of her spirit, which is not divided and dissipated among creatures but is entirely concentrated on God. Then God takes pleasure in her and often manifests Himself to her, transforming her recollection, that is, her “silence” and making it divine, for “the knowledge of Him is in divine silence” (St. John of the Cross).

This total silence, both exterior and interior, disposes the soul to know and listen to God Who dwells within her: “One Word spoke the Father, which Word was His Son, and this Word He speaks ever in eternal silence, and in silence must it be heard by the soul” (St. John of the Cross); and Sister Elizabeth of the Trinity exclaims: “O eternal Word, utterance of my God, I desire to spend my life in listening to You!” This is the fundamental occupation of a soul who wishes to be a “perfect praise of glory” of the Blessed Trinity: to live interiorly in continual silence, listening to and adoring God present within her, and exteriorly, being and doing only what the divine Word indicates from moment to moment.

This article appears in the current issue (Dec. 2018) of Catholic Family News (click HERE to subscribe; current subscribers can access the E-Edition HERE).

*****

On Nov. 10, 2018, Professor Douglas Farrow published a long article on the website of the Catholic World Report entitled, “The Conversion of the Papacy and the Current Church Crisis,” in which in a friendly manner he criticizes several theses which I proposed on the occasion of the Catholic Family News Conference in Deerfield, Illinois, on April 8, 2018, speaking on the theme, Tu es Petrus: True Devotion to the Chair of St. Peter.

Professor Farrow is a scholar whom I greatly esteem, and his criticisms deserve a brief reply from me, also because they stem from a concern we share in common: the serious situation into which the Church has been thrown under the pontificate of Pope Francis. A premise, however, is necessary: what is truly interesting is not discussing either my own personal opinions or those of Farrow, but rather to seek to clarify the true doctrine of the Church on the points we are discussing. As far as I am concerned, my point of reference seeks always to base itself upon the immutable Magisterium of the Catholic Church.

Visibility of the Church

The underlying problem is that of the visibility of the Church. Farrow seems convinced that only Jesus Christ, and not Peter as well, is the foundation of the Church. In his article we read:

“The first difficulty lies in De Mattei’s claim that ‘the primacy of Peter constitutes the bedrock on which Jesus Christ instituted His Church, and on which She will remain solid until the end of time’ – that, and his further claim that ‘the fierce war’ conducted by the devil against the Church is a war centered on the papacy. It seems to me that, though this appears to be drawn straight from Pastor Aeternus, it risks an exaggeration that mirrors, or is mirrored by, the false devotion we are both wanting to address; and that in its own way it hints at two churches, one visible and the other invisible. Jesus Christ, not Peter, is the stone that the builders rejected but that God has made the cornerstone, which is ‘marvelous in our eyes’ (Ps. 118:22f.; cf. Matt. 21:42). Both the visible and the invisible dimensions of the Church are founded on Jesus, as Paul explicitly says, and with Him on the apostles and prophets (Eph. 2:20ff.; cf. Rev. 21:14).

Farrow, who would like to overcome the traditional categories of “visible Church” and “invisible Church,” continues as follows:

“The Church Jesus promised to build, considered in its temporal phase as the Church militant – temporal and eternal, militant and triumphant, are much better categories than visible and invisible when thinking about the Church – is built upon Himself and no other. It is not, in the most important and fundamental sense, built on the primacy of Peter, whether as a person or as the holder of an office and a vocation. The petra to which Jesus refers in Matt. 16:18 is certainly not Petros the man, as the Rosican element today would have it, nor even Petros the office-holder, as De Mattei would have it, nor yet the bare confession (‘Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God!’), as Protestants would have it. Rather, this petra is the divinely generated missionary dynamic of Peter confessing Christ in and for the whole apostolic college, as every holder of his office is bound to do. It is only in relation to the college that the primacy of Peter comes into play, and only because of its collective vocation and authority to confess Christ truly that the college itself matters. Jesus Himself remains both the bedrock of the Church and its architect.

This conception of a “dynamic mission” of Peter, interconnected with the concept of the Apostolic College, is the daughter of the Second Vatican Council more than the Catholic Tradition, but Farrow insists:

“De Mattei claims that, ‘like her Founder, the Church consists in a human element, visible and external, and a Divine element, spiritual and invisible.’ But the divine element is not merely spiritual and invisible, nor is the human element merely visible and external. This is not true of Jesus Christ, Who is of one being with the Father, and cannot be true of the Church either, which ‘by no weak analogy’ may be compared to the mystery of the incarnate Word (LG 8). De Mattei comes to the conclusion that the pope ‘is he in whom this visibility of the Church is concentrated and condensed.’ Not so. The visibility of the Church, as much as the invisibility, is concentrated and condensed in its cornerstone, Jesus Christ.

Farrow thus proposes a “Christological” reform of the Papacy, turning to Scripture and the Fathers “for a better vision of the Petrine ministry”: “I am not proposing a reform that is, in its own way, a down-grading of the papal office. I am proposing that the reform we need is in the direction of simplicity, transparency, and integrity.”In order to explain this task, he writes:

“It is the responsibility of the pope to guard the faith and to protect the integrity of the sacraments, first in his own diocese – which pontiffs for far too long have not served in a direct or intimate way – and then through the exercise of oversight in the college of bishops and, occasionally, in ecumenical councils. It is not his responsibility to be pastor to the planet, which he can be only by selling his papal soul to the media devil. It is not his responsibility even to choose bishops, though he has the right to choose and depose bishops. His responsibility is to see that bishops who are ‘carried away with the error of lawless men and lose [their] own stability’ (2 Pet. 3:17) are disciplined effectively or else replaced, lest the unity of the Church in essential matters of faith and morals be compromised.”

For Farrow, “there are three ecclesial dimensions to which to attend, not two only: the evangelico-magisterial, the ontologico-sacramental, and the juridico-canonical.” The evangelico-magisterial papacy constitutes a “third way” between “the idolatry of the person” which Farrow attributes (correctly) to the fans of Pope Francis and “the idolatry of the office,” which he attributes (erroneously) to me. He believes that he finds this “third way” in an evangelico-magisterial mission of the Pope which minimizes the power of jurisdiction, which constitutes the essence of the Pope’s mission, in order to reduce the papacy to a pastoral and magisterial power of direction.

Peter is the Rock and Visible Head

However, according to the doctrine of the Church, proclaimed by the First Vatican Council in the Dogmatic Constitution Pastor Aeternus (July 18, 1870), taught by Leo XIII in the encyclical Satis Cognitum (June 29, 1896) and reaffirmed by Pius XII in the encyclical Mystici Corporis Christi (June 29, 1943), the unique Church of Christ has two components, one visible and one invisible. And if Jesus Christ is the primary foundation of the Church, visible and invisible, the Pope is, by Christ’s will, the secondary foundation, the “rock,” on which the visible Church is founded.

Pius XII teaches:

“…Our Redeemer governs His Mystical Body in a visible and normal way through His Vicar on earth. You know, Venerable Brethren, that after He had ruled the ‘little flock’ Himself during His mortal pilgrimage, Christ our Lord, when about to leave this world and return to the Father, entrusted to the Chief of the Apostles the visible government of the entire community He had founded. Since He was all wise, He could not leave the Body of the Church He had founded as a human society without a visible head. Nor against this may one argue that the primacy of jurisdiction established in the Church gives such a Mystical Body two heads. For Peter, in view of his primacy, is only Christ's Vicar; so that there is only one chief Head of this Body, namely Christ, Who never ceases Himself to guide the Church invisibly, though at the same time He rules it visibly, through him who is His representative on earth. After His glorious Ascension into Heaven, this Church rested not on Him alone, but on Peter, too, its visible foundation stone. That Christ and His Vicar constitute one only Head is the solemn teaching of Our predecessor of immortal memory Boniface VIII in the Apostolic Letter Unam Sanctam; and his successors have never ceased to repeat the same.” (Mystici Corporis Christi, n. 40, emphasis added)

It is precisely because he is the foundation of the Church that the Pope has a power not only of “direction” but of “jurisdiction,” that is, of governance. In fact, as Leo XIII affirms in Satis Cognitum:

“…[B]y the will and command of God the Church rests upon St. Peter, just as a building rests on its foundation. Now the proper nature of a foundation is to be a principle of cohesion for the various parts of the building. It must be the necessary condition of stability and strength. Remove it and the whole building falls. It is consequently the office of St. Peter to support the Church, and to guard it in all its strength and indestructible unity. How could he fulfill this office without the power of commanding, forbidding, and judging, which is properly called jurisdiction? It is only by this power of jurisdiction that nations and commonwealths are held together. A primacy of honor and the shadowy right of giving advice and admonition, which is called direction, could never secure to any society of men unity or strength. The words – ‘and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it’ (Matt. 16:18) – proclaim and establish the authority of which We speak.” (n. 12, emphasis added)

The Pope does not only have a pastoral and magisterial mission, but he has also received a fullness of jurisdiction, thanks to which he extends his supreme and universal governance to the entire Church. He is the universal bishop, with immediate and ordinary power not only over Rome, but over every single member of the faithful and over all the Pastors of the Church. “And as the Bishops,” adds Leo XIII, “each in his own district, command with real power not only individuals but the whole community, so the Roman Pontiffs, whose jurisdiction extends to the whole Christian commonwealth, must have all its parts, even taken collectively, subject and obedient to their authority” (ibid., n. 15). The office of Vicar of Christ embraces not only all Christians, but all men, called by vocation to become part of the flock of Peter, as John XXIII reiterates in his homily Venerabiles Fratres (Nov. 4, 1958).

Farrow seems to criticize the development of the Papacy which occurred in the second millennium of its history. His idea is that of returning to a vision of the Petrine ministry which adheres more to that of Scripture and the Fathers, or to the first centuries of the Church. He sees a line of continuity between the Dictatus Papae (1075), with which St. Gregory VII claimed the rights of the Church against the pretenses of the German Emperors, and the conception of the Dictator Pope incarnated by Pope Francis. Here he falls into an error typical of American liberal culture: equating pontifical sovereignty with a dictatorship. The Church is a monarchy, but monarchy, and above all the medieval monarchy, represents the antithesis of dictatorship. Whereas in modern dictatorships, as also in democratic regimes, the sovereignty of the one who creates the law is not limited by any superior authority, in traditional monarchy the sovereign, who is the source of civil law, is subject to both natural and divine law.

Monarchical Constitution of the Church

The Church, by the will of Christ, is a monarchy in which the Supreme Pontiff reigns and governs, and it cannot be transformed into a constitutional monarchy, in which the sovereign reigns but does not govern, limited to a role of pastoral guidance. A change in this governance would not touch merely the historical form but the divine essence of the Papacy. Not even the Pope may modify the constitution of the Church, of which he is the custodian and not the master, because the Pope is the secondary, not the primary, foundation of the Church. We do not need a “third way” between heterodoxy and orthodoxy, but a point of equilibrium between papolatry and Gallicanism, such as the German bishops found in their Collective Declaration of January-February 1875, fully approved by Pius IX. The full text of this Declaration may be found immediately following the Apostolic Letter Mirabilis Illa Constantia of Pius IX of March 4, 1875, in the Latin-English edition of the Enchiridion of Heinrich Denzinger, edited by Peter Hünermann. The bishops reaffirm that “the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Pope is a potestas suprema, ordinaria, et immediata (supreme, ordinary and immediate power) that was conferred on the Pope by Jesus Christ, the Son of God, in the person of St. Peter,” but the Pope “is subject to divine laws and is bound by the directives given by Christ for His Church,” so that “he cannot change the constitution given to the Church by her divine Founder.”[1]

Farrow seems to have, moreover, a curious vision of the development of the continuity of the Church. In its 2000-year history, the Papacy has known a slow development, just like every organism that progresses and strengthens its rapport with the outside world. The Church, recalls the great canonist Cardinal Alfonso Maria Stickler (1910-2007), “was not founded by Christ as an institution, already rigidly and irrevocably constituted, but as a living organism, which – like the body, which is an image of the Church – would have to have a development, passing from the embryonic state, in which all of the essential characteristics of her being were present in seminal form, to a process of growth, according to external circumstances and a necessary adaptation to them, and also – not least of all – following the positive action of human free will.”[2] The passage of growth from the Church of the first centuries to that of St. Gregory VII and Boniface VIII, the Church of the Dictatus Papae and of Unam Sanctam, was not an “involution” but a physiological development of the Church, which progresses in history because the true Tradition is progress and there is no true progress outside of the Tradition.

Crisis Stems from Modernism

The religious crisis of our time has doctrinal roots which date back to Modernism, but Farrow does not seem to understand this, because for him it “is a crisis of morals even before it is a crisis of doctrine or of ecclesial institutions.” The Second Vatican Council, in its documents and its spirit, represents a moment of discontinuity with the homogeneous development of the Tradition precisely because it puts its roots down in modernist culture. And one cannot understand how Farrow, who would depart from the Medieval and Tridentine Church for the millennium of the Church of the Fathers, can deny the way in which the men of the Church have distanced themselves from the Tradition in the last 60 years.

Farrow sees a discontinuity between Pope Francis and his immediate predecessors, but he sees no such discontinuity between the pre-conciliar Church and Vatican II, between the ancient Roman Rite and the Novus Ordo Missae. The words of Philip Lawler in his book Lost Shepherd could sum up, I believe, Farrow’s thought: “The Papacy of Francis has been a disaster for the Church.”[3] I share this judgment. But if five years of the collective words, acts, and omissions of the pontificate of Pope Francis can be considered a catastrophe, is it not possible to express the same judgment on the collective words, acts, and omissions which stem from the Second Vatican Council? If a pontificate can be considered a disaster, may not a Council of the Church also be so considered, even if it is authentic and legitimate? I do not believe that we can fully comprehend what is happening today within the Church without tracing its roots back to the Second Vatican Council, of which Pope Francis is only the most recent fruit.

Like Farrow, I am also convinced that “we cannot go backward in history.” I do not know if he is convinced, as I am, that although the present era is disastrous, it will be followed by an era of the authentic rebirth of the Church, as the Madonna announced at Fatima with the promise, “In the end, My Immaculate Heart will triumph.” This coming era will also be that of the triumph of the Church, founded on Jesus Christ and His visible Vicar on earth, the Roman Pontiff.

]]>Defending “True Devotion to the Chair of St. Peter”: A Response to Professor Douglas FarrowPope Francis and the Devil: Misreading the Signs of the TimesCFN BlogProfessor William KilpatrickSat, 15 Dec 2018 11:00:00 +0000https://www.catholicfamilynews.org/blog/2018/12/15/pope-francis-and-the-devil-misreading-the-signs-of-the-times59f88a70bce176951da623c1:59f88b47ec212d7d776a7d73:5c142c6d4fa51a7383d21bfaDespite his penchant for theological innovation, Pope Francis seems to hold some fairly traditional beliefs about the devil. Here’s an example from Gaudete et Exsultate:

It is precisely the conviction that this malign power is present in our midst that enables us to understand how evil can at times have so much destructive force… Hence, we should not think of the devil as a myth, a representation, a symbol, a figure of speech or an idea. This mistake would lead us to let down our guard, to grow careless and end up more vulnerable. (160, 161)

It has been said that one of the devil’s greatest achievements is to convince people he doesn’t exist. Pope Francis hasn’t fallen for that deception. He realizes that the devil is no myth. “When we let down our guard,” says Francis, “he takes advantage of it to destroy our lives, our families and our communities.”

But when it comes to the question of how the devil is most likely to take advantage of us, Pope Francis seems to deviate from the path of tradition. Indeed, he seems to think that the devil does much of his work by making use of traditional pieties. Thus, the pope has frequently rebuked conservative critics of his silence over the sex-abuse scandals with being in league with Satan, the “Great Accuser.” On different occasions he has implied that they are “a pack of wild dogs,” scandal-mongers, and even collaborators in crucifixion.

So, in the Pope’s estimation, traditional Catholics—i.e., those who are more likely to be shocked and outraged by drug-fueled sex orgies in the Vatican and the like—are doing the devil’s work by exposing and criticizing such things. If they were good Christians, he seems to say, they would keep quiet and not add fuel to the scandals.

Who is most guilty of sowing division in the Church? Pope Francis seems to suggest that the greater blame lies not with the worldly bishop who takes the sixth commandment as a suggestion, but rather with the conscientious Catholic who takes it seriously and wants the hierarchy to take it seriously as well.

One can see a similar pattern in Pope Francis’s response to the migration invasion of Europe and the resulting crime wave. He extends every consideration to those who are directly responsible for the trouble—namely, criminal migrants and their European enablers—while excoriating those Europeans who oppose the migration. For example, he once observed that those who fail to welcome migrants “are sowing violence, racial discrimination, and xenophobia.”

Thus, as in the sex-abuse cover-ups, we see the Pope circling the wagons to protect those most to blame for the crisis, while taking aim at those who are trying to call attention to the crisis. It’s a classic case of shooting the messenger.

The Great Accuser and the Great Migration

We don’t know what role the Great Accuser is playing in the matter of Muslim migration, but it’s worth speculating on the question because Pope Francis has most probably already speculated, and he has quite possibly reached the wrong conclusion.

If he thinks that the devil’s strategy in regard to the sex-abuse scandal is to stir up “fundamentalist” Catholics into a frenzy of overreaction, what role does he assign the devil concerning the spread of Islam? Does Francis assume that Satan seeks to disrupt the harmony that would otherwise exist between Christians and the followers of Muhammad by hardening the hearts of fundamentalist Christians and other types of “fundamentalists” such as nationalists and xenophobes?

We know from his various statements over the years that Francis does worry about the activities of Satan. Indeed, the whole final section of Gaudete et Exsultate is concerned with “Spiritual Combat, Vigilance and Discernment.” He speaks of the “constant battle” against the “temptations of the devil” and the “wiles of the devil,” and he speaks also of the need for discernment so that we can know “if something comes from the Holy Spirit or if it stems from the spirit of the world or the spirit of the devil.”

But just how good is Francis (and his key advisors) when it comes to discernment? The record suggests that they are not particularly gifted in this respect. The trouble is, it’s quite easy to confuse the Holy Spirit with the spirit of the times, and therefore one can be forgiven for thinking that the Pope and his inner circle regularly fall into this trap. The spirit of the times declares that climate change should be our most urgent priority, and Francis and company second the motion. The spirit of the times requests that we take a more relaxed view of sex between consenting adults, and key Vatican advisors seem to be of the same mind. The spirit of the times tells us that the transgender agenda is as normal as apple pie, and leading bishops find themselves in accord. A few years ago, the spirit of the times dictated that the Iranians could be trusted 100 percent not to violate the nuclear deal, and lo-and-behold, that also became the opinion of the Vatican.

So when Pope Francis tells us that the Holy Spirit is prompting us to welcome millions of migrants from Islamic lands, Catholics are justified in wondering whether he hasn’t once again confused the Holy Spirit with the spirit of the times. The fact that the Church’s stance on Muslim immigration coincides so closely with that of so many secular leaders is cause for suspicion. So is the fact that both European leaders and Vatican leaders are agreed—contrary to a mountain of evidence—that Islam is a religion of peace. It sometimes seems that the Vatican’s discernment meter is broken, for it always points in the direction of the prevailing winds.

To his credit, Francis tries to discern the devil’s machinations—“the wiles of the devil”—but on the debit side he seems to assume that the devil tends to strike from the “right”—by manipulating “fundamentalists” and “rigid” traditionalists. The idea that the devil might strike from the left by manipulating liberals like Francis himself seems not to have occurred to him. Yet that is what seems to be happening. The policies Francis pursues in regard to Islam and immigration—policies that assume a benign interpretation of Islam and its aims—would seem to mesh nicely with the devil’s own plans.

A Devil’s-eye View

Granted that this business of discerning the devil’s motives is a tricky one, let’s nevertheless try to look at the matter from the devil’s point of view.

To begin with, let’s suppose that his main goal is to destroy Christ’s Church. If that is so, then a migration-invasion of Europe would suit his purposes very well. Since Islam has been a perennial enemy of Christianity, its implantation in Europe—once the heart of Christendom—would be a great victory for him. Islam has already had considerable success in exterminating Christianity in the Middle East and North Africa. The subjugation of Europe would do much to strengthen the claim that the religion of Allah is the true religion. And it would set the stage for the collapse of Christianity in other parts of the world.

Yet, Francis’s policies seem to play into the devil’s hands. Against all the best interests of the Faith he is supposed to protect, Francis has energetically promoted the migration of Muslims and, thus, of the Islamic faith into Europe. The only scenario in which this would make sense would be if Europe were a vibrantly Christian continent capable of assimilating masses of Muslims and even converting them. But that is not the case. Christianity has been dying in Europe for decades, and it has been further weakened and discredited by the recent sex-abuse scandals. If anyone is to be converted, it seems likely that it will be the few remaining Christians in Europe (along with a great many secularists).

Naturally, the devil’s plan of action would have to be somewhat subtle since a direct invasion by Islamic armies would be unlikely to succeed. A gradual, slowly-boiled-frog approach would have a much better chance of success. It would encounter little resistance and it would appeal to the sense of self-satisfaction that European elites take in displays of tolerance. On the other hand, it’s difficult to see why Satan would want to stir up the “xenophobic” alarmists and thus take the risk of Europeans being prematurely alerted to the dangers. Continued complacency would better serve his purposes.

From a Satanic point of view, it would also help immensely if the campaign for the Islamization of Europe could be painted in a noble light. If the devil could somehow prompt European elites to promise that immigration would be beneficial in solving both the labor shortage problem and the welfare shortage problem, people would be more willing to adjust themselves to the new situation. If, on top of that, the Pope could be induced to give his imprimatur to the project, so much the better. Of course, in ordinary times the devil wouldn’t set his hopes so high, but—mirabile dictu—this is exactly what Pope Francis has, in effect, done.

In Gaudete et Exsultate, Pope Francis says we must “keep attentive” and be mindful of Scriptural cautions to keep “our lamps lit” and “keep awake.” He also reminds us that “even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.” All very good advice. But is the Pope following it?

There is, of course, no way of knowing for certain if Satan has taken a hand in the spread of Islam into Europe. But if he has, he has been very successful in disguising it as an “angel of light” project. In fact, most of the work of sanctifying the migration has been done for him by numerous clerics both Catholic and Protestant. Pope Francis, in particular, has drawn a halo around the immigration project—not only suggesting that migrants will enrich European society, but also that the welcomers would be acting in a Christ-like way. More than “angels of light,” the Pope has consistently portrayed migrants as representatives of Christ Himself.

The devil, as Francis points out, is a master of disguise. He can appear as an angel of light. He can quote Scripture. And he is certainly not above taking advantage of a Christian’s best instincts—particularly the impulse to charity. But, as I have noted elsewhere:

One has to wonder about charitable impulses that facilitate the takeover of Europe by a decidedly anti-Christian religious ideology. How charitable is it to consign Europeans, their children, and their grandchildren to a life of bloodshed and civil war, or else to a life of subservient dhimmitude such as Christians now experience in many parts of the Muslim world?

It would be a great triumph for Satan if he could convince Christians that they are doing the will of God when, in fact, they are carrying out his own agenda.

The Holy Spirit or the Spirit of the Devil?

In speaking against opponents of mass migration, Pope Francis said, “the Holy Spirit will help us to keep an attitude of trusting openness that will allow us to overcome every barrier and scale every wall.” It seems, however, that Francis should give consideration to the possibility that it is not the Holy Spirit who wants to open the floodgates of migration into Europe, but the “spirit of the devil.” After all, the way that the immigration issue is currently being framed by Catholic leaders is exactly how one would expect a supremely intelligent but “malign power” to frame it. He would present the “welcoming” response as a good and noble act of Christian charity, he would quote the words of Christ, and he would label opponents of immigration as unchristian. As I wrote previously:

The Church’s welcoming response to Islam and Islamic migration can be looked upon as a shining example of Christian charity, or it can be looked upon as an example of stubborn foolishness and presumption in the face of a fast-spreading evil. It’s a devilishly complicated situation. And that should make us wonder if the devil himself isn’t intimately involved in it.

Rather than let down our guard, Pope Francis suggests that we need to practice discernment:

We must remember that prayerful discernment must be born of a readiness to listen: to the Lord and to others, and to reality itself, which always challenges us in new ways. (Gaudete et Exsultate, 172)

This, too, is good advice, but once again we need to ask if Francis is following it. Does he manifest a “readiness to listen”? It’s becoming obvious that Francis does not listen to his critics. He ignores them, fails to respond to their sincere concerns, demotes them, and, in some cases, criticizes them harshly. Does he listen to “reality itself”? Well, that’s a matter of judgment. But as I and others have argued, he does seem to be ignoring the reality of the worsening situation in Europe. Just as important, Francis seems to be engaging in wishful thinking about the history and nature of Islam. His declaration that “authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Koran are opposed to every form of violence” is about as far removed from reality as one can get. Instead of allowing himself to be challenged by realities, he seems content to be guided by pleasant but unexamined narratives.

As Pope Francis says: “[Christ] asks us to examine what is within us … and what takes place all around us—‘the signs of the times.’” But what exactly are the signs of the times that might lead us to believe that Islam has reformed itself, and is now interested not in conquest, but only in harmonious encounter and dialogue? Every day, in Europe, Egypt, Nigeria, Somalia, Syria, Gaza, Pakistan, the Philippines, Iran, Turkey, the Central African Republic, and elsewhere the signs of the times are saying quite the opposite. Figuratively speaking, they are billboard-size signs lit up in neon. Yet they don’t seem to figure at all into the Pope’s process of discernment. Instead, he studiously ignores them.

Pope Francis has not been very discerning about the men he has elevated to key positions in the Church. Why should we suppose that he has correctly discerned the promptings of the Holy Spirit in other vital matters?

]]>Pope Francis and the Devil: Misreading the Signs of the TimesDe Mattei: The Two Souls of the Yellow Gilets CFN BlogDr. Roberto de MatteiFri, 14 Dec 2018 14:40:09 +0000https://www.catholicfamilynews.org/blog/2018/12/14/de-mattei-the-two-souls-of-the-yellow-gilets59f88a70bce176951da623c1:59f88b47ec212d7d776a7d73:5c13c0ce758d46274c5e47a1Editor’s Note: We are very happy to reprint this excellent commentary on the ongoing uprisings in France (first appeared on Rorate Caeli). Professor Roberto de Mattei, a good friend of CFN and speaker at our 2018 conference, not only considers the protests from a Catholic perspective but also places them in the necessary historical context.

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The “reverse turn” of Emmanuel Macron’s République en Marche, confronted by the advance of the “gilets jaunes”, reveals the significance of the protests which have erupted in France over the last few weeks.

The prime target of the protest was the arrogant French President, who, in his discourse to the nation on December 10th had to admit the failure of his policies. But Macron is the embodiment of the European technocratic powers and his failure, moreover, is the economic and social muzzle imposed on France by the Eurocrats. The political winners of this arm wrestling, for the moment, are the defeated political parties of the 2016 presidential elections. The Rassemblement National of Marine Le Pen and La France insoumise of Jean-Luc Mélenchon ( which had obtained 47% of the votes in the first ballot against Macron’s 24% and were defeated in the second ballot) have now been vindicated.

The operative word of these parties, as Eric Zemmour observes, is “sovereignty”: «Souveraineté de la nation et souveraineté du peuple. Souveraineté de la nation contre l'oligarchie européenne. Souveraineté du peuple contre les élites françaises qui l'ont bradée» (Le souverainisme à deux visages, in Le Figaro, 6 May 2016). Today, according to surveys, the appeal to sovereignty is shared by more than 60% of French people, as is happening in Italy, where a percentage of voters equally strong, support Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte’s government. Many observers have highlighted the similarities between the revendications of the gilets jaunes and the agreement of the Lega –Five Star government. The first are in the opposition and the second are governing, but the European elections are at the door and these may change the political horizon, beginning precisely with France.

Another word resonates alongside that of sovereignty: “populism”. The traditional right-left bipolarity, it seems, is being replaced by the dichotomy of the people-elites. The new dialectical opposition is hypothesized both by Trump’s former advisor, Steve Bannon and the political scientist dear to Putin, Aleksandr Dugin, who asserted: “Today the left and the right no longer exist: only the people against the elite [exist]. The “yellow waistcoats” are creating new political history, a new ideology.”

Yet, is the dichotomy of the left and the right truly on the wane? And is the new people-elites dialectic an authentic alternative to the former?

From the historical-political viewpoint, both these concepts originate with the French Revolution, which marked the end of Christian civilization, and the rise of a “profane” political space. In 1789, when the General States assembled together in Versailles, the French Monarchic State was characterized by a social tripartite. At the top were the clergy and the nobility, at the bottom the Third State. After the dissolution of the General States, in the National Assembly, the defenders of the Throne and the Altar were located on the right, and on the left, were the liberals and the republicans. The first defend the upper class, the second the people – in the lower ranks. The two metaphors, those of the vertical and horizontal, are interconnected.

Throughout its history, it was always the left that made the people its exclusive subject for the political life of the nation, by proposing a conception of sovereignty contrary to the traditional one. For Rousseau and Abbé Sieyes, both intellectual fathers of the French Revolution, sovereignty resides infallibly in the people, who cannot in any way alienate their power by delegating it and dividing it. A well-known historian, George Mosse (1918-1999) emphasized how the aberrant “cults” of the French Revolution were nothing other than the dress-rehearsal for the adoration of the “general will” proposed by the modern totalitarianisms.

History, however, is never made by the people, but always by a minority. Minorities made the French Revolution and the Italian Risorgimento: a minority made the Bolshevik Revolution; a minority made the ’68 Revolution and a minority is leading the apparently “headless” movement of the gilets jaunes.

The role of minorities in the governing of a society was underlined by all the great masters of political thought, from Plato to Aristotle right through to the modern school of political science originating in Italy at the beginning of the 20th century by Gaetano Mosca, Vilfredo Pareto and Roberto Michels. By studying politics as a “science”, this line of thinking has documented how, in all human societies, the political direction of the society is always affirmed by an organized minority, defined as elite.

The word “elite” is the modern transcription of “aristocracy” which means, etymologically, government of the best. When a governing class is corrupted, from being elite, it becomes a financial, party-politicking oligarchy, or even of another type, but always characterized by the fact of egotistically pursuing personal or group interests. On the contrary, the elite is a governing class that subordinates its own interests for that of a Nation’s common good.

What distinguishes an elite, as Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira underlines, is being disposed to sacrifice its own interests in order to serve the common good which is the highest interest of society (Nobiltà ed élites tradizionali analoghe nelle allocuzioni di Pio XII al Patriziato e alla Nobiltà, Marzorati, Milano 1993). Pius XII calls being “an elite, is not only through blood or lineage, but most of all through works and sacrifice, creatively carrying out services to all social communities.” (Discourse to the Patriciate and the Roman Nobility, January 11, 1951).

After the fall of the Communist and Nazi totalitarianisms, representative democracy, apparently the winner, slides towards its definitive collapse. What has happened in fact in the previous two centuries, and has amplified over the last twenty years, is a process in the “pyramidization” of society which has seen new oligarchies replacing the traditional elites. In 1995, a posthumous essay by Christopher Lasch appeared, dedicated to The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy (tr. it. Feltrinelli, Milano 1995), in which the American historian accuses the new elite of having betrayed Western values, by closing themselves up in an artificial and globalized environment, faraway from the real problems of society.

The anti-elitism that distinguishes the thought of Noam Chomsky, is however, a piece de resistance of the left.

Yves Mamou, in Le Figaro of December 4th , states that the gilets jaunes, are not a Revolution, but a movement of “national Restoration” against the Revolution imposed over the last 30 years by the political, economic and administrative elites. The analysis is correct if it refers to the soul of the protest, which, however, has at least two: one on the right and one on the left. The first incarnates the real France; the France of farmers, artisans, tradesmen, shopkeepers, professionals and soldiers; the France of real wealth, which is, above all, moral wealth, as it is founded on sacrifice and a patrimony of common values. The second is the France of social hatred, which derives directly from the French Revolution. The dream is that of a democracy directed by the Jacobins, the Anarchists and the Trotskyites who are seeking vindication, following the failure of the bureaucratic, Marxist-Leninist State. Two souls that converge in a “sovereignist” and “populist” piazza, in front of which, however, another piazza is sharpening its weapons in the shadows.

The immigrants of the first, second and third generations were absent from a revolt that had the rejection of immigration among its objectives - but they won’t stay silent for long. The future scenario that sees the gilets jaunes as protagonists, appears destined to be overlapped with that suggested by Laurent Obertone in his visionary novel: Guerilla: Le jour où tout s'embrasa (tr. it. Signs Publishing 2017). While the Fifth Republic is revealing its vulnerability, the piazzas ready to explode in France are now two: the multicultural one and the sovereign-populist one. And if France explodes, Europe explodes.

]]>De Mattei: The Two Souls of the Yellow GiletsBrett Kavanaugh’s Chickens Come Home to RoostCFN BlogCliff KincaidThu, 13 Dec 2018 11:00:00 +0000https://www.catholicfamilynews.org/blog/2018/12/13/brett-kavanaughs-chickens-come-home-to-roost59f88a70bce176951da623c1:59f88b47ec212d7d776a7d73:5c1211518a922d9333919ad5Editor’s Note: As reported by LifeSiteNews on Monday of this week (Dec. 10, 2018), “The United States Supreme Court will not hear Kansas and Louisiana’s appeals defending their efforts to cut off Medicaid funds to Planned Parenthood, effectively forcing taxpayer funding of abortion to continue and signaling similar pro-life efforts in other states will fail.” Sadly, this is so because Chief Justice John Roberts and newly appointed Justice Brett Kavanaugh chose to side with the Court’s “liberal bloc” in refusing to review the cases. In early September, when Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings were just beginning, CFN published a commentary piece by Cliff Kincaid that laid out the reasons why Kavanaugh was the wrong choice. In light of this week’s news, we now publish the following commentary, also by Kincaid, as a reminder that this latest disappointment is really not too surprising.

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Citizen journalist David Risselada has written a book, Psychopolitics in America: A Nation Under Conquest, in which he explains how so many are being led astray by what passes for the “conservative media.” Consider the case of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who was sold by Fox News and other beltway groups as a conservative pro-lifer. After Kavanaugh’s Monday ruling in favor of Planned Parenthood, many grassroots conservatives are beginning to realize they were misled about his real record. One conservative website called it a “betrayal.”

It wasn’t a surprise to us. My group, America’s Survival, Inc., was virtually alone in exposing Kavanaugh’s real record on abortion and other social issues. We published the 44-page report, “The Deep State Wears Black Robes” and called his nomination a “Trojan Horse.” Yet, Fox News and other conservative media, as well as various Washington, D.C.-based conservative groups, had advertised Kavanaugh as a strong conservative. Many of them were invited to the White House to listen to Kavanaugh hail the legacy of “liberty” of the man he would replace, pro-abortion and pro-gay Justice Anthony Kennedy. That turned out to be an indication of Kavanaugh’s liberal direction on the court.

We had conducted a careful study of Kavanaugh’s record, noting that he was a virtual clone of Justice Kennedy. A liberal Catholic, Kavanaugh actually had a record of ruling against evangelical chaplains. But one leading conservative told me I had gone off “the deep end” by opposing Kavanaugh. Fox News refused to cover our detailed critique of his record. It was a very controlled “debate” with “both sides” defined so as to exclude the real truth.

But Fox News wasn’t alone in stacking the deck. All of the major conservative websites fell for the ruse that Kavanaugh was a conservative. They know who they are. They owe their readers an apology.

Kavanaugh’s ruling against pro-lifers will protect taxpayer funding of the abortion industry. A liberal commentator was ecstatic: “Justice Kavanaugh just saved Planned Parenthood from red states attempting to defund the clinic network.” Another said Justices Kavanaugh and John Roberts “joined with the court’s progressives to preserve Planned Parenthood’s public funding.”

Drawing upon the material at our website, America’s Survival, Inc., Risselada’s book quotes from one of our reports on Kavanaugh’s Deep State and Washington insider background. Of course, Soros-funded groups were organizing against Kavanaugh. But we saw the opposition as largely fake and designed to get liberal-left forces agitated about the future of the court. In short, it was an organizing tool that accelerated when the sex charges were launched against him. In truth, Kavanaugh was one of the best judges they could hope for from a Republican president.

Our opinion was that they were going through the motions of opposition in a dialectical maneuver designed to force conservatives in line behind him. A much better nominee would have been Judge Amy Coney Barrett, a conservative woman with a clear pro-life record. But she didn’t have Kavanaugh’s Washington establishment connections.

In light of Monday’s ruling, Mat Staver of Liberty Counsel said that he isn’t ready to throw in the towel on Kavanaugh just yet, expressing the hope that another abortion case could come before the court in 2019 and that Kavanaugh and Roberts could end up on the right side.

But pro-life author Gregg Jackson, who opposed Kavanaugh, isn’t surprised by his ruling in favor of the abortion industry:

“We all know President Trump and the Republicans promised to defund Planned Parenthood in the run-up to the 2016 election, to get the pro-life Evangelical and Catholic vote. Instead of defunding Planned Parenthood when they had the ability to do so with a Republican congressional majority, Republican president, and Republican-appointed majority Supreme Court, not only did they fully fund Planned Parenthood baby killers/body parts sellers, giving them over a billion dollars in the last 24 months but they also increased funding by 37 percent. Republican-appointed judges gave us the pro-abortion rulings Roe and Casey and have funded Planned Parenthood at a greater clip then Democrats have!”

It’s fascinating to note that an old photograph has surfaced showing a young Brett Kavanaugh appearing with a young lawyer by the name of Rod Rosenstein. It turns out they were both on the staff of Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr, who went through the motions of investigating the Clintons without pursuing charges of murder in the Vincent Foster death case. Rosenstein, now the United States Deputy Attorney General, appointed Robert Mueller as the Russia-gate prosecutor.

As we argued in “The Deep State Wears Black Robes,” if Mueller or another prosecutor subpoenas Trump, and Trump refuses to comply, the case could very likely appear before the Supreme Court, where Kavanaugh could emerge as the deciding vote.

We noted that the progressives are already calling for Kavanaugh to recuse himself from anything related to the Russia investigation if it comes before the Supreme Court.

But rather than recuse himself, Kavanaugh could actually rule in favor of Mueller and the Russia-gate probe. He could vote against Trump in order to counter the criticism that he believes presidents can’t be subpoenaed and are “above the law.”

The chickens are coming home to roost. President Trump, who is in the midst of a White House staff shake-up, should root out those who betrayed him in the Kavanaugh matter.

For their part, responsible conservatives who backed Kavanaugh and either were deceived or consciously deceived the American people concerned about human life issues have no option other than to propose impeachment of the court’s newest Justice.